The Future of Faculty Development

Reading the future is a risky business for the most thoughtful and prescient minds. I was therefore surprised to be asked to address the future of faculty development in view of the fact that I already have a record of predictions. I predicted, for example, \u27Richard Nixon will never resign\u27; \u27The Cardinals will stick with an Italian-Pope\u27 and \u27there will be a cabinet level Department of Education in 1978\u27. With this record behind me, I will nonetheless tum my talents to faculty development and present my thoughts about its future. I should point out that I use the term faculty development in its most inclusive sense. I call most efforts by colleges, universities and outside agencies to positively change or improve faculty, in any of its roles, faculty development. Thus the most widespread and prominent faculty development program in higher education has been the provision of sabbatical leaves. Taking as a temporal perspective the three decades between 1960 and 1990, one can usefully characterize the 1960\u27s as a decade of student development. The 1970\u27s I will call the decade of Faculty Development. And the 1980\u27s I will argue will be a decade of Institutional Development