Brief 17: New Faculty: A Catalyst for Change

The message of new faculty is not new, but their power may be. As the demand for new faculty increases due to retirements and increased enrollments in systems and institutions around the country, large cohorts of tenure-track faculty are being hired. Early-career faculty want what they’ve wanted for many years now: clarity surrounding the tenure process, a workload that is meaningful and manageable, professional development for research and teaching, a hospitable campus climate, a collegial workplace, work-family balance, equity, transparency, and fairness. Many young teacher scholars are interested in collaboration over competition, research that is organized around problems rather than disciplines, and a multidisciplinary work environment shaped by interaction between researchers and users. At the same time, colleges and universities are facing pressures from outside to change what they do, how they do it, and how they measure it—much of this in line with the values and concerns of new faculty cohorts