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The HigherEdJobs Podcast is dedicated to helping higher education professionals find fulfillment in their careers and be the change agents that higher education needs in today's world. Join hosts Andrew Hibel and Kelly Cherwin, along with guest experts, as they examine job search strategies and break down the latest news and trends in higher education.
Andy Hibel 0:02
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast. I'm Andy Hibel, the chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.
Kelly Cherwin 0:08
And I'm Kelly Cherwin, the director of editorial strategy. Today, we are happy to welcome Adrianna Keyser. Adrianna is the dean's professor of leadership, Wilber Keefer, professor of higher education at the University of Southern California and director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education. Adrianna is an expert in a number of higher education realms, including changing faculty trends, contingent faculty change management and leadership and institutional culture, to name a few. Thank you so much, Adrianna, for joining us today.
Adrianna Kezar 0:37
I am pleased to be here with you. Thanks so much.
Kelly Cherwin 0:40
So, Adrianna, let's set the stage, a little background here. You and I met at the AJC&U, the American Association of Colleges and Universities Conference a few months ago where you presented alongside two of the Delphi Award winners. So can you just give us a little background on not only the Pullias Center but also the Delphi project?
Adrianna Kezar 0:59
So the mission of the Pullias Center at USC is to advance equity in higher education. We're a research center. We started about 25 years ago, and we do research that spans access to college and to graduate education, looks at issues around student success in particular. But we also focus in on other equity issues such as for faculty. The Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Students success emerged about 13 years ago as I was doing my research on change in higher education for three decades to lead change and reform efforts, improving teaching on campus or making campuses more inclusive places. And as I've been doing that research at the beginning, when I started doing it, people would talk about things like reward structures weren't supporting changes, you know, innovations. But then about maybe 15 years ago, I started hearing that it's really hard to do teaching improvement when the faculty are cycling in every semester and they might not be here next semester. And it was through that awareness, I started to explore what was happening with faculty trends, and I started to see that 70% of the faculty were now on contingent appointments, and I hadn't been as aware of that. And I thought, I'm sure others are not as aware of these trends. And so through the project, we develop awareness about the changing faculty trends. We collect data and research to inform campus policies and practices for better supporting contingent faculty. Part of the research that we collected showed that there are really harmful practices on campuses that don't support faculty who are on contingent appointments. And so we really make an effort to collect research to understand what are the kinds of policies and practices that can be put in place to create better supports. The other thing we do is advocate for those changes and partner with organizations, national organizations, to help ensure that campuses have access to the information that we provide at the Delphi project.
Andy Hibel 3:26
Just a quick point of clarification for for folks to make sure we're all on the same page for the purposes of the project. How is the term contingent faculty defined?
Adrianna Kezar 3:36
Sure. So the largest percentage of that is 52% are adjunct or part time faculty. We don't like to use the term adjuncts because it's not a very asset based term. It means not essential. So we've been using the term VITAL faculty to refer to what are now faculty and contingent appointments. The other 18% are full time contingent employees that usually have year to year contracts rather than semester to semester, which is what most part time faculty have. They are often term lecturers or instructors on campus, so they at least have a full time appointment.
Kelly Cherwin 4:20
Thank you for that definition. And I will say as a contingent faculty member myself, I would prefer not to be labeled as non-essential and I do kind of like the VITAL role. So I think the terminology is is huge. That's a huge benefit in how we're framing these roles. So thank you for that. So I know you talked about the polio center. Can you expand a bit more on the Delphi project and have any of your goals changed obviously over the years as trends have changed?
Adrianna Kezar 4:48
Thanks, Kelly. That's a great question. So we initially played much more of a role of gathering up and understanding, I'll call it the problem, right. What what was going on in higher education. Why is it that one of the things I think we're going to talk about later is that we were seeing negative student outcomes as a result of taking more courses with what we're term, again, vital faculty. And I really came to understand it's of course not these faculty members. It's the unsupported working conditions that they have on campus. So early on we spent a lot more time gathering up the data to help people understand the issue. Now, we really pivoted more through things like the Delphi Award, which is an award we give to two campuses each year, actually two entities, I should say, because it doesn't have to be a campus. It can be another organization like a like a union or a national association or a consortium. Anyone who's doing work to advance better policies and practices for non tenure, track faculty or advance what we call new faculty models. So we gave the award to Wooster Polytech Institute a couple of years ago because they have put into place something called a teaching intensive tenure track role, and that's where those who do teaching can move in to what they traditionally, we have not rewarded faculty with tenure for excellence in teaching, and that's been excellence in research. So these are institutions that are now giving tenure, which are long time secure appointments to faculty who are focused in on teaching. So we are trying to foster more of these kind of new faculty models as well. So we have pivoted towards really trying to capture now more of the good work that's going on on campuses. It's a dynamic field. Things are changing. That's good. When I first started this work, actually there were not a lot of campuses that were focused on making changes. So my efforts were about making the argument for why we need to do the changes. Now I'm spending a lot more time trying to capture what kind of really good work is happening out there, so I can propagate more of that across the academy.
Andy Hibel 7:10
Thank you for that really insightful roadmap of kind of where you've been and where you're going. And you had mentioned the Delphi Award, and I believe you're approaching the seventh year of award winners through the Delphi project on the changing faculty and students success at the polling center. Can you talk about the impact of that initiative and how institutions can be considered for the award?
Adrianna Kezar 7:33
Yeah, you know, early on, I would say in this work, I would occasionally hear about a campus doing a wonderful set of changes, and I would write up a case study about it. I'm always trying to capture good work that's happening, but I realize I just didn't have a good vehicle for doing this. I was thinking about doing a survey and I survey and find out, but I knew I wouldn't get the depth of understanding about the good work out there. So instead I thought about the idea of an award so people would apply and I would be able to get to see the good work. And in fact, each year we get 50 to 100 applications and I'm able to review those and then I see all this tremendous, great work that's going on out there. And I was lucky enough to find the Tingle Foundation that saw this as a compelling way to be able to identify best practices and push the field forward. And they provided funding for the first four years of the award. And now we are funded through the TIAA Research Institute to give this award each year. And it really has been a game changer in terms of being able to identify the different, like amazing policies and practices that are going on out there so campuses can apply if they have done either of the two areas I mentioned created supportive policies and practices and or created new faculty model the criteria for applying is that they can describe this and have fully implemented the initiative that it's become institutionalized that we know it's going to stay in some way on the campus, that they use data to evaluate the changes. So we can see over time whether it's a successful as it's intended that they partner. And this is a really important one, that they partner with their vital faculty to develop the policy, that it's not done in isolation without the interest of those who are the benefactors of the changes that there's a clear focus on equity that they are considering how to make this position in comparison to others on campus as equitable as possible and that they're attentive to issues around climate and culture. We think it's really important not to just say put professional development in place for vital faculty, but on the other hand, have a climate of disrespect that exists on campus. So we are really looking for campuses also that are attentive to how do these policies really add up to make a difference much more broadly in the culture of the institution. So that vital faculty feel a sense of inclusion and belonging?
Andy Hibel 10:33
That's wonderful. And I'd be remiss because when I read about the 2023 awards, which the University of Arizona one, as well as Loyola Marymount University, I read through a little bit about what Loyola Marymount its program was awarded for, which is their program is called Promoting a Greater Sense of Inclusion and Stability for Non Tenure track Faculty at Loyola Marymount University. It created a holistic environment where they're more than 950 contingent faculty are provided with clear rank and promotion criteria for faculty evaluation for both part time and full time faculty slash lectures, improve compensation and benefit. The program also includes inclusion and shared governance through contingent faculty participation in the faculty Senate Class Scheduling priority for part time faculty and annual and extended contracts that help ensure employment stability. That's fantastic.
Adrianna Kezar 11:30
It is.
Mike Walker 11:31
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Andy Hibel 12:08
Is there more you'd like to share about winners not only Loyola Marymount and University of Arizona also has an amazing program but what are it like successful common practices or overall themes that you've seen that can give folks listening a little bit more of a tangible side that, if you will, if I'm a contingent faculty member or a vital faculty member, if you will, that kind of sounds like, wow, I want to check out that place. I want to go work there. What can you share with folks that might get them a little bit excited?
Adrianna Kezar 12:41
And thank you for that question. Yeah, I will say that we have seen a vast variety of policy and practice changes, and as you were just listing from Loyola Marymount, one of the criteria we really look for is that breadth of theories of change is because changing a culture really means you're looking across a variety of policies and practices. So we see campuses working on everything. So starting on the front end, you know, issues of hiring, how how are they hiring faculty? For example, earlier, one of the major problems with vital faculty is they can be hired at the very last minute. So right before the class is about to start. So campuses that are considering different ways that they're engaging a much more thoughtful and systemic hiring processes is one of the changes that we see on many, many campuses that have gotten the Delphi Award. Of course, a big one is then once you're hired, what kind of contract are you on? And Loyola Marymount mentioned like having longer term contracts, really exciting. Some of the award winners we've had in the past, like University of Denver, they're giving their VITAL faculty what we call longer term contracts five, seven years, ten years. So we're starting to see real attention to longer term contracts sometimes after a short probationary period of a couple of years to ensure that they're a strong teacher first. But we're definitely seeing a movement across different award winners towards these longer term multiyear contracts. Another theme is improved salary and benefits. This is, of course, a huge issue, the salary for vital faculty averages. So this is one of those statistics that just sticks with you, $24,000 a year. So it's about the same as fast food workers, sometimes less. And we really have to deal with the salary, equity and ensuring benefits for this group of faculty. And so we've seen amazing efforts by institutions like Bay Path College, also one of this last year's winners, University of Arizona. They did a big effort to look at both increase in salary but also salary equity, which is another issue, just ensuring that there's comparable pay for their vital faculty. So we're seeing a lot of movement in that space as well. One of the things that impacts, particularly the issue of student success, is the access that vital faculty have to professional development or any kind of mentorship, any kind of orientation to the campus. I mean, it's surprising, but on a lot of campuses, they're kind of left out of a lot a lot of these process fees or they're offered in ways that there is no access for the vital faculty because it's on campus or at a time they can't come. So the whole issue around accessibility of some of these things or offering pay, since this is often something that they're doing on their own time. So campuses, I've seen a tremendous trend towards paying for and we saw this a good example of Montgomery College, but also Bay Path College, where they're paying their contingent faculty to show up for their professional development. They're ensuring that they have really good orientation. This is really important, particularly around the quality of teaching and learning on campus. If you're you're not oriented to the students are on campus, you can't serve those students well. You don't know the goals of your course or how it fits into the course sequence or the goals of your department. It's really hard to deliver good teaching and learning. And so I've seen a big movement in that area promotion. You see this with both of our award winners. This year. University of Arizona and Loyola Marymount both focused in on creating a career track for the past few decades. If you're a vital faculty member, you just kind of stayed in your role forever. Just drifting with no career track and campuses are moving to create, as they have for their tenure track faculty, a career track so that you can get promoted by showing excellence in your work, that you can get a pay increase. These things are really important motivators, especially if we want faculty members to deliver their best in the classroom. Having a promotional scheme is really important to those efforts you mentioned with Loyola Marymount, looking at evaluate and that's something we've seen across award winners, is really looking at how do you provide good feedback to faculty members and not just student evaluations, which we've seen tremendous problems with. They've been used punitively to fire a vital faculty member if they try something new in a class and it doesn't go well and they get some negative student evaluations, that they can end up getting fired before many, many stories about this and a reason why they don't implement professional development if they do have professional development opportunities. So re-examining evaluation was absolutely critical. And Harper College is a great example from our award winners, where that was really the whole area they tackled was really revising their evaluation system. So occasionally we will give an award just for somebody diving deep into one area where they really make a significant change on that effort. I'll just list a couple others because I don't I don't want to I just want to give you the breadth. But I'm thinking about service as another area. Often vital faculty are expected to do service, but there's no aspect listed in their contract about that. And so that goes back to the contract issues really. What is the work of the vital faculty being clear about that? There's been a lot of abuse where faculty members do all sorts of free service because they're afraid they won't get a contract the next time if they don't offer up service. So campuses have been looking at that issue, and I've already mentioned this, but really the issue around climate is really critical. So campuses that have been doing climate surveys to understand what is the felt environment for their vital faculty. We've given awards for campuses that are focused on that area as well. So it's a comprehensive range of issues and I'm happy to follow up on on others. And I know we're going to talk about governance because that's one of the most important changes.
Kelly Cherwin 19:40
Yeah, Well, let's go into to that area. I know when I was at the session, both of the universities that we were discussing, both the University of Arizona and Loyola Marymount, stressed how important having the non tenured track and contingent faculty members be part of, you know, include in the shared governance. So can you go a little bit more in to that and why it's so important?
Adrianna Kezar 19:59
Yeah, all my research I have gone out to campuses and and done research on a series of campuses that were able to innovate. This was early on one of the first studies I did trying to capture how were campuses able to kind of the I'll call it the path to change. How were they able to institute changes for their vital faculty? One of the things that came out of that initial study I did about I was about 13 years ago now was the absolute centrality of involving vital faculty in shared governance that once their voice was able to be at the table at campus where decisions are made and we're policies are created, they were able to significantly change not only the wrongheaded policies that currently exist on campuses, but they were able to offer up significant ways to think about new policies that the campus hadn't even considered or thought about. So there's just no substitute for for having the voice at the table to be able to make it. Also, ongoing changes, it's really easy to make sort of one change to a policy that administrators can really see as egregious, but then just understanding that the whole depth and comprehensive nature of the set of changes needed to support vital faculty really is just not going to come without them being at the table and having a voice. So we see this as almost every award winner is that they end up including their vital faculty in governance. And then it just really opens. It just blows open the whole process of them being able to do this better than they were before. They included them in in significant ways in the governance process. And this is both at the institutional level with the academic Senate, but also in departments. It's really important that they be invited to departmental meetings as well.
Kelly Cherwin 22:01
I think a key phrase that you just said is is able to do it better. And I think it's exciting this conversation to hear all of the things that these college and universities are doing to to try to push that forward. So a question you said it started about seven years ago with the award. How many applicants for like the first year? And you said now it's up to about is it between 50 and 100?
Adrianna Kezar 22:22
So the first year I think we had about 20 to 25 applications, and it's kind of increased each year as we've offered it. And it's just been, as I said, incredible to see the work out there and I just really encouraged campuses that are doing good work to submit and to be rewarded for their efforts. And because they do really serve as a beacon, as a light for others and provide ideas that campuses may not otherwise be able to identify. I haven't seen any other way beyond my award for people to identify how they might do this work better on their campus.
Kelly Cherwin 23:03
And I think that's part of reason why I was so excited for the conversation today, because I love that campuses can learn from other campuses. And I'm sure you would love the fact that if there was thousands of colleges and universities applying for this award. So hopefully colleges, universities can move towards making things better. And we talked about including it's... I don't know I haven't tried to say I don't want to make this sound so simple, but it's... it's not that hard to include other voices. So thank you so much for, you know, giving some background on that.
Andy Hibel 23:36
Thank you so much for that wonderful summary. And vision of what institutions are out there trying to do to, at its core, be inclusive of this very important part of their team and more importantly, the impact that this part of the team has and the success of the students they are serving. If what you're feeling right now is that we're just trying to put a positive, happy face of this, listen to the first part of this conversation and understand that not all institutions are that way. But what we're saying is there are institutions who are purposeful in this way and if you're interested in your career and doing this and want to take your career seriously because it works for you, here's what you should consider.
Mike Walker 24:28
Join us next time for the conclusion of our conversation with Adrianna Kezar.