NDSU Faculty Turnover Study

1. NDSU Faculty Turnover Study Rachel Benz M.S. School counseling FORWARD Scholar

2. Chapter 1 - Introduction The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) study on Faculty Gender Equity Indicators found that NDSU had 90.2% tenured male faculty members and only 9.8% tenured female faculty members (West & Curtis, 2006). NDSU’s percentage of tenured female faculty was the second lowest percentage out of doctoral universities nationwide (West & Curtis, 2006). At NDSU, female full professors made up only 1.5% of the entire STEM faculty while men of the same rank made up 33.3% (NDSU FORWARD, 2008).

3. Purpose of the Study • The purpose of the study was to learn about the reasons faculty members leave NDSU. • Information may lead to recommendations for increasing retention rates and satisfaction for NDSU faculty members. • Particular attention will be paid to concerns of women and STEM faculty members. Ultimately, this study aims to help NDSU be an environment where quality faculty members want to stay and can be productive.

4. Matier’s (1989) Framework Push vs. Pull “individuals are more likely to seek out and respond to outside offers because of dissatisfaction with their present employment situation than they are to be enticed to leave simply by greener pastures” (Matier, 1989, p. 5). Looks at internal and external factors.

5. Research Questions • What will faculty who left NDSU identify as the reasons for leaving? • Do university policies/procedures have an impact on faculty members’ experience at NDSU? • How will faculty who left describe their working experience at NDSU? • How will their current position compare to their former position at NDSU? • Will there be differences in participants’ responses based on their academic disciplines? • Will there be gender related differences in participants’ responses?

6. Chapter 2 – Review of Literature Previous researchers placed a strong emphasis on institution-specific analysis because of contextual factors and perceptions that occur. Ambrose et al. (2005) were adamant about institutions gathering their own data because “Without such data, universities cannot effectively target their problems, identify their strengths, or fully understand where their own experiences intersect with or diverge from the experiences of other institutions” (p. 806).

7. Chapter 3 - Methodology Qualitative

8. Participants A list of 45 (16 female, 29 male) former faculty members who left NDSU between May 2008 and March 2010 was gathered. Twenty faculty members agreed to participate, 10 declined participation, 10 did not respond to phone or e-mail contact, and five were unable to be contacted. Interviews were conducted with 12 male (five STEM, seven non-STEM) and 8 female (three STEM, five non-STEM) faculty members. Interviews lasted between 20 and 75 minutes.

9. Chapter 4 – ResultsChapter 5 – Summary, Discussion, and Recommendations

10. NM1 NF2 I loved working at NDSU. I loved my time there and you know I would think that I could’ve had a career there and enjoyed my time there very greatly but I did not feel like that was possible in that political environment. I think if you’re kind of a good Midwestern woman uh you know preferably Lutheran um you know and don’t speak up too much in department meetings and um you know don’t don’t get too demanding of your students um I think I think you’d do just fine…I think its women who you know stand up for themselves and their ideas who do speak out they have a very hard time.

11. NM3 NM4 Oh well in terms of mentoring we really didn’t have any of that and actually that may have worked out ok if we had just switched my assignment I mean in my department people were sort of left to sink of swim on their own and with teaching that is fine with research I struggled. We left a good opportunity to go to what was a better opportunity for us and I appreciate all that the folks at NDSU did for me and I enjoyed my time there.

12. NF5 SF6 I had a really hard time getting research done um because of…uh you know a lot of teaching requirements um depending on how many committees I was in for the university that sometimes took a lot of my time. *Participant left for external reasons, but brought up some interesting observations related to gender. It’s pretty common knowledge amongst tenure track faculty that you try not to rock the boat and you try not to do anything that is going to um…that is going to be seen as rocking the boat and I think bringing up gender as an issue in that department would have been seen as rocking the boat.

13. NF7 SM8 You’re spending all of your time going around covering your back because there are people out there in the departments the senior faculty trying to get at you in whatever way they can and I don’t understand why they haven’t realized that that they continue to do this they lose junior faculty who are doing all this work that they refuse to do because they are in their own minds too good to do it and they haven’t realized yet that if everyone is treated better the whole system improves and if they work together the whole system improves instead of working against each other every day. I had invested a lot in this program and uh I felt as if the administration didn’t listen to me at all and so I guess you know I mean that was the final straw I guess as one would say.

14. NF9 NM10 I just do it all myself with more people and less time, more students and less time, fewer resources and I was like you know what I can’t do justice to this in that kind of you know under those circumstances I just can’t it’s a professional program and I have an obligation to provide them with a quality education and I just can’t fulfill that given what you’ve told me you want. You can’t succeed in this kind of environment these are problems that have to be fixed. You are going to lose qualified people you have got and you’re not going to get the kind of people that you want to work with unless you fix some of these problems and I tried to say that until I was blue in the face and again these was no hope. I never got the idea that anybody wanted to deal with it and it was that hopelessness that forced me out. Basically NDSU has two weaknesses now they cannot compete with the other university in salary also weather you know we cannot make the weather change however at least NDSU can pay a market salary to keep the good faculties. [sic]

15. NM11 NM12 I was very happy at NDSU but I just wanted to move forward in my career. I think if I would um you know complain about NDSU it might be the fact that you know it didn’t pay better so that it would be possible on you know a associate professor’s salary you know to really live comfortably that we could have made it on one income.

16. SF13 SF14 My current university is pretty much the same as NDSU so there is no big difference but the thing is here because it is warmer so we you can partake in other activities like it’s not just school, research you can have other social life um that you can meet more other people. Uh frankly it was making me sick. I couldn’t stand to get up every day and go into work. I couldn’t stand fighting everyday to be emotionally and verbally abused um which is how I felt in my department um and I could see that it shouldn’t be happening I could see my peers at other universities um and other colleagues that I worked with outside of the university I could see that wasn’t happening in their world and I just wasn’t willing to take it anymore.

17. SM15 NM16 Before new chair it was all standard or everybody was getting ratings based on the performance after he came everything was based on personal relationships so before the chair and then after the chair it wasn’t a good working environment anymore. A couple reasons one would be geographic preference for where I ended up over NDSU and the other is more opportunities in a bigger college and a much bigger department.

18. SM17 NF18 I’m enjoying the opportunity to help launch the new program. We’re very much enjoying being closer to our family which is the two reasons we really came but of course we miss Fargo we miss people from NDSU and so it’s a mixed bag which it is I think when you move. I would have stayed had it been had we had stronger leadership um and what happens when leadership isn’t strong is that faculty start bickering and they form little camps and that happens I mean it happens everywhere when you don’t have strong leadership and faculty are not they’re just not happy they don’t kind of fall in line and things don’t happen smoothly so there was a lot of bickering among faculty at the time too.

19. SM19 SM20 Now I am working in an applied area. I can do research independently it won’t be funded by anybody it won’t be reviewed by anybody unless I send it off to whoever to look at so I’m free to do real research. I don’t have any overhead. I don’t have to apply for grants. I don’t have to get the approval of an editor or whatever so if you can do research on your own I think it’s much better and it will be better research. My spouse got a job offer at {current university} and we were able to work out a similar job offer for myself so it was really a situation where both of us had permanent job offers that were tenure track job offers and it is very difficult to turn those things down.

20. Research Question 1What will faculty who left NDSU identify as the reasons for leaving? • Six main themes emerged: • External Factors • Weather/geographical location (one SF, one NM) • Family reasons (one SF, one NM, two SM) • Internal Factors • Salary (two NM) • Position requirement challenges (two NF, one NM, two SM) • Lack of advancement/professional opportunities (two NF, three NM, one SM) • Campus climate (four NF, two SF, two NM, two SM) • Leadership (three NF, one SF, two NM, two SM) • Collegiality (three NF, one SF)

21. Research Question 2Do university policies/procedures have an impact on faculty members’ experience at NDSU? • Hiring Practices: Six (two NF, one SF, two NM, one SM) • Recruiting qualified candidates (n=3) • Considering unqualified candidates (n=2) • Hiring without a national search (n=1) • PTE • Eight (two SF, five NM, one SM) participants were positive overall: process clear (n=6), fair (n=3), reasonable (n=2). • Nine (three NF, one SF, three NM, two SM) participants brought up concerns: impact of personal relationships (n=7), clarity of the PTE process (n=3), and selection of PTE committee (n=2).

22. Research Question 3How will faculty who left describe their working experience at NDSU? • Three themes emerged: • Workload • 11 (one NF, two SF, five NM, three SM) responded that they liked their workload percentage breakdowns of research, teaching, and service at NDSU) • 9 (four NF, one SF, two NM, two SM) reported that their actual workload percentages turned out to be different than their assigned percentages. • Workplace climate • Liking colleagues (6)/people they work with (5). • Gap between sr./jr. faculty (7), isolated in position (6), departmental divisions (5), dissatisfaction with administration (8). • Support • Department chairs, resources, mentoring.

23. Research Question 4How will their current position compare to their former position at NDSU? • Position Role • Six participants (two SF, three NM, one SM) said that the position they are currently in is the same or very similar to the position they had while at NDSU. • Five (two NF, one NM, two SM) obtained administrative positions. • Four (one SF, one NM, two SM) left academia. • Geographical location • For six (one NF, one SF, two NM, two SM) faculty members, geographical location was cited as a positive aspect of their current position. • Interestingly, 17 (four NF, two SF, six NM, five SM) of the 20 participants thought Fargo-Moorhead was a nice/great/good/wonderful place and/or liked/loved living there. *access to amenities (n=7), nice/friendly people (n=6), family friendly environment (n=6), and good schools (n=3). *Study participants mentioned the following concerns about Fargo-Moorhead: it was remote or isolated (n=5), it had a difficult singles scene (n=5), it was hard to come into from the outside (n=3), and it had flooding issues (n=3).

24. Increased research benefits in new position (n=8: three NF, two SF, two NM, one SM) Increased salary in new position (n=6: one NF, four NM, one SM)

25. Research Question 5Will there be differences in participants’ responses based on their academic disciplines? • Only one direct STEM/non-STEM comment was made. • About salary – both who left for salary were NMs. • Two STEM faculty members (one SF, one SM) addressed the concerns not having adequate lab facilities and their struggles with trying to get and or keep their lab space. • Five of the six participants who indicated that they left NDSU due to lack of advancement or professional opportunities were non-STEM. • All four participants who said service took up a lot of time were non-STEM faculty members (three females, one male). Interestingly, all three female STEM participants responded that they were protected from service and their service load was minimal. • All of the respondents who spoke positively about being mentored were non-STEM faculty (n=4).

26. Research Question 6Will there be gender related differences in participants’ responses? • Ambrose et al. (2005) found: • approximately half of the male and female faculty members who chose to leave their positions left because of a lack of collegiality. • both male and female faculty members brought up the issue of an “old boys’ network” • Four faculty members ultimately left in part because of collegiality – all of whom were female. • *half of the female participants

27. Five of the eight female participants mentioned gender related concerns. • Three of the four who had problems with stress and conflict at faculty meetings were female. • One of the six participants who expressed positive sentiments about their colleagues was a female. • Mentoring difference. • Regional perceptions of women.

28. Interestingly… • Further study of Non-STEM females may be warranted. • None of the eight who were positive overall about NDSU’s PTE process were NFs. (two SF, seven NM were) • Only one of the 11 who stated they felt supported at NDSU. • Three of the five who said they did not feel supported were NFs. • Only one of the eight who were positive about their dept chair. • Only one of the 10 who said they liked their workload. • None of the six who spoke about liking the balance between their research and teaching were NFs. • None of the six who spoke about having minimal service requirement were NFs while four of the five faculty members who said that service took up a lot of time were NFs.

29. Faculty Recommendations • More faculty governance: 3 • Faculty elected PTE advisory committee • Faculty Senate • Administrative personnel changes: 3 • Professional development for chairs: 3 • Climate • Support • Resources • Strengthen post-tenure reviews: 3 • More formal/proactive mentoring program: 3

30. Researcher Recommendations • Research should be conducted in the form of exit interviews. • Revisions are suggested for the survey instrument. • Did you have another position lined up? • Were you actively looking or recruited? • Future analysis should be based on both gender and STEM/non-STEM status. • Gender should be added as an internal, intangible factor to future turnover models. • Turnover studies should be institution-specific.

31. Recommendations for NDSU Conduct Job Satisfaction Surveys. Conduct Exit Interviews. Increase Faculty Governance. Strengthen Post-Tenure Reviews. Improve Student Evaluation Measures. Create a Collegial Atmosphere. Provide Resource Support. Provide Mentorship. Assist Networking. Provide competitive Compensation. Enact a Maternity Leave Policy.

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