New Perspectives On Faculty Stress: Its Relationship With Work Engagement, Teaching Effectiveness, And Program Preferences To Manage Stress

The purpose of the study was to analyze faculty stress with three interrelated parts. First, the study examined the relationship between work engagement, stress factors, stress outcomes, and faculty characteristics. Next, the study analyzed the relationship between students\u27 perception of faculty stress, faculty teaching effectiveness, class size, and student classification. Finally, the study investigated faculty preferences for health and wellness programs in the workplace. The study used two anonymous online questionnaires to collect data from 45 faculty participants and 119 student participants from a U.S. public, four-year research university. For faculty, the results demonstrated statistically significant strong relationships between all the stress factors and outcomes indicating faculty who experience any of these stressors are more likely to disengage from work. Work disengagement, stress factors, and stress outcomes had statistically significant correlations with age, tenure status, and gender. Younger faculty are more likely to experience burnout, issues with cognitive concerns, and disengage from work tasks. Non-tenure-track faculty are more likely to disengage from work, experience higher levels of stress and burnout, and experience physical, cognitive, and mental health concerns. The results also indicated that female faculty are more likely to present with cognitive concerns. For students, the study found that students are more likely to perceive a faculty member is less effective when the faculty member is perceived as sad or tense. Students are also more likely to perceive faculty who display sadness as the class size increases or as students move up in classification. The study fills gaps that enhance the understanding of faculty stress and various dimensions that contribute to work disengagement, teaching effectiveness, and managing stress