Innovating change in the faculty model : a study of voices and influences in defining faculty role at Cascadia Community College

Graduation date: 2004The founders of Cascadia Community College changed faculty role\ud and duties as they designed a new college. The college founders chose\ud which themes of learning reform would be enacted by faculty in this new\ud setting. They determined what elements of traditional roles continued to be\ud important and what new expectations would be articulated. They decided\ud what themes would become the center of faculty role in the creation of the\ud new college. The study seeks to establish the themes of reform that were\ud adopted by this college and how the founders expected those reforms to\ud reside in, change, and influence faculty role. Through interviews with\ud founding college members, the researcher, herself a participant in the\ud founding of the college, triangulated the voices of the key participants with\ud the publications of the new college that were related to faculty role.\ud Themes that emerged from the study were outcomes,\ud interdisciplinarity, organization and structure, innovation, technology,\ud global/multicultural perspectives, complexity, and expectation for traits. A\ud new view of expanded faculty role expectations is explored. This role is\ud reflective of many themes seen in reform literature involving tenets of the\ud learning college, the shift from teaching to learning, and outcomes-grounded\ud teaching. A model is presented to explain the interrelatedness of\ud the themes and the new perspective on teaching in the reformed college