Who Am I? The Sociologist as Dean

In some respects, sociologists might seem to be the least obvious candidates for a deanship. They question authority and debunk bureaucracy. Yet they can be found in dean’s offices serving successfully. This paper discusses the seeming contradiction between the discipline of sociology and the position of academic dean. It is argued that the discipline of sociology can prepare one to succeed at deaning in numerous ways, including transitioning into the role, resolving unavoidable role conflict, and adopting an administrator’s perspective.     

Seen but unseen: Part-time faculty and institutional surveillance and control

This article examines surveillance techniques utilized by several metropolitan community colleges to manage part-time faculty. We find that with the increased use of part-time faculty, administrators at these organizations are relying less on direct, personal supervision of these instructors and are instead using more “remote” surveillance practices to certify that “acceptable educational standards” are being maintained. The use of these practices not only signals a decline in the professional status of college instructors, but also points to differences in social control techniques used in “productive” institutions versus those used in “disciplinary” institutions. We find that while surveillance techniques employed at these community colleges make the education process visible and controllable, they simultaneously render part-time faculty invisible but controlled.     

Adjudicating Frame Shifts and Frame Disputes in the New Millennial University: The Role of the Dean

This paper argues that sociological theory provides a sound basis for analyzing the social organization and reorganization of the college or university and for guiding the activities of the college dean. Frame analysis theory, developed in the study of social movements, and the attendant concepts of frame shifts and frame disputes, are drawn on to facilitate understanding of the organizational change being experienced by many comprehensive universities today. Various university constituencies proffer sometimes competing frames that can be characterized as “old school” vs. “new school” or “theoretical” vs. “practical,” yet collective and at least moderately harmonious action is required to attend to the tasks at hand. More specifically, the processes of frame alignment detailing the way that the frames held by various individuals and groups link to larger frames, offer a valuable theoretical tool for a dean. The dean’s task is one of adjudicating frame disputes within the college, navigating frame shifts in the university and reframing the concerns of the college to both internal and external audiences. The author concludes that the use of frame analysis demonstrates that sociological theory can be a vital contributor to the leadership of colleges and universities and to leaders’ understanding of the changes occurring therein.     

Thirty Five Years of Viewing Sociology as an External Program Reviewer: A Dean’s Perspective on How Administrators View Sociology

The author, who has served as an external program reviewer for 17 sociology program reviews, gives his perspective on the views that academic administrators have of sociology. On the plus side, administrators view sociology as a discipline that teaches many students; values and incorporates diversity; produces research aimed at ameliorating societal problems; and is involved in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary projects. On the negative side, administrators are likely to see sociology as (1) deficient in grants, research and peer reviewed publications; (2) deficient in rigor of curriculum; (3) contentious and non-collegial; (4) too ideological; (5) isolated within the college/university and not sufficiently involved in campus governance; (6) too focused on tenure track positions lost over the years; (7) not sufficiently involved with assessment of student learning outcomes and community service learning; and (8) unable to understand the values and priorities of academic institutions and administrators. The author offers some suggestions on how sociology can eliminate these deficiencies.     

Union Professors: Framing Processes,Mobilizing Structures,and Participation in Faculty Unions*

This study traces the development of union loyalties among community college professors. Assuming that activism is motivated by contextual and ideological factors, the paper analyzes the ways that social networks, collegiate workplaces, and framing practices transform political bystanders into committed union members. Using data from a study of junior college professors in Kentucky (N = 329), the study finds that union participation is strongly linked to a distrust of campus administrators and having pro‐union friends and colleagues. Likewise, perceptions of union efficacy, a liberal identity as well the professor’s education level predicted the actual joining of their campus’ faculty union.     

To the Dark Side and Back: The Administrative Odyssey of an Academic Sociologist with Lessons Learned

My first semester as a tenure-track faculty member at a mid-size university began ignominiously and suggested that my academic career might be short-lived. It began with a blistering memo that was stridently critical of the academic dean’s policy which led to being taken to the proverbial woodshed. Other less serious episodes followed which put me at odds with the “administration.” Yet I have spent more than a third of my career in administrative positions, including a stint in the provost’s office (as an assistant vice chancellor), and only recently returned to faculty status. Over the course of my academic career I have noticed that a large number of academic sociologists have taken administrative positions in academia beyond that of the department chair. This paper will explore this phenomenon and discuss the reasons members of the ‘debunking’ discipline assume administrative roles. I will address this issue within the context of my personal odyssey in administration and how the sociological perspective and imagination has contributed to working in the ‘dark side’ of academia. Finally, I will discuss lessons learned and recommendations for the aspirant administrators among the ranks of academic sociologists.     

Forming an institutional culture with multinational administrators and teachers at Effat College,Saudi Arabia

This article describes the teaching and learning culture of a newly established women’s college in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The academic culture at Effat College in 2002 included administrators and teachers from many nations, which created unique challenges in cross‐cultural communication. These challenges, in turn, affected the development and organization of the institutional culture at Effat. Using a cultural lens, archival data were used to analyze the expectations and relations between the multicultural faculty and administration at the college. Our research revealed that the faculty related to one another through their own cultural perspectives. Faculty from the western nations promoted more reflective and constructivist classrooms, while those from eastern nations were more authoritarian. With a diverse faculty from multiple nations holding significant differences in cultural expectations, it is important to acknowledge that all beliefs hold value and deserve respect. Whether or not people accept one another’s views, just having a more clear understanding of the differences may allow them to seek out commonalities and explain varying perspectives and actions. Therefore, we need to be conscious of the cultural assumptions faculty and administrators bring with them into higher education.     

We have rights too: examining the existence of professional prejudice and discrimination against public relations

This study of a large sample of public relations educators (n = 342) found substantial evidence that professional prejudice and discrimination towards public relations and public relations education exists. More than half (56.6%) of the respondents said they have had a dean, director or department chair who was prejudiced against public relations, and many of these administrators evidently have made use of exaggerations and stereotypes about public relations while criticizing it. Results also suggest this prejudice is more pronounced among print journalists and journalism faculty than it is among other groups of communication educators and practitioners.     

Using Student Course Evaluations: Findings,Issues, and Recommendations

Abstract

Although university administrators widely use student course evaluations (SCEs) in evaluating faculty performance, faculty members are skeptical about what SCEs actually measure. Faculty lack information about SCE reliability and validity and whether administrators use them fairly in making personnel decisions. This article reports research findings on factors that threaten the reliability and validity of SCEs. It provides recommendations for minimizing these threats. It reports findings of a recent survey of social work deans on their opinions about and use of SCEs. The article also presents recommendations to enhance the use of SCEs.     

Coping with the disruptive college student: a practical model.

This article offers some practical suggestions for college faculty and administrators who must deal with disruptive students. It emphasizes the need for well-defined codes of student conduct and clear procedures for dealing with disruptive behavior, and considers why university officials may be reluctant to deal with disciplinary problems related to psychiatric disturbances. The author discusses the distinction between disruptive and dangerous behavior, looks at the use of mandatory psychiatric withdrawals, makes recommendations for conditions of re-enrollment, and suggests how a campus mental health service can be useful in dealing with the problem.     

Postmodern Swing Dance and Secondary Adjustment: Identity as Process

In this article, the author describes activities of strategic consumption that members of a postmodern swing dance scene utilized to construct identity. He deploys Goffman's category of “contained secondary adjustment” for describing social interactions that are moments of purposeful resistance designed to usurp (while also being lodged within) organizational and/or institutional claims and constraints for identity and self. Specifically, the article describes swing dancers' presentations of unique selves, thrift store shopping, tavern socializing, and swing dancing. Swing dancers utilized these secondary adjustments to resist the dictates of corporate‐driven and mass‐mediated claims and constraints for “mainstream” consumer identities. These secondary adjustments add up to an “identity distancing,” which is the individual's and/or group's purposeful distancing and separation from other identities or groups associated with popular culture. Describing the swing dancers' secondary adjustments reaffirms the symbolic interactionist stance that identity construction is a durable social interactional process.     

On ‘flip‐flopping’: Branded stance‐taking in U.S. electoral politics1

This article examines stance in U.S. political discourse, taking as its empirical point of departure Democratic candidate John Kerry's epistemic stance‐taking in the televised 2004 presidential debates. Kerry's stance‐taking is shown to help display the characterological attribute of ‘conviction’ and serve as a rejoinder to critics who had branded him as a ‘flip‐flopper.’ His stance‐taking is thus not primarily ‘to’ or ‘for’ copresent interactants, but is largely interdiscursive in character. ‘Conviction’ and its opposite, ‘flip‐flopping,’ suggest further how stance‐taking itself has been an object of typification in the agonistic dynamics of candidate branding and counter‐branding. In moving from epistemic stance‐taking in discourse to models of the stance‐taker as a social type, this article addresses questions about the units and levels of analysis needed to study stance in contemporary political discourse.     

Creating LGBTQI+ programing in urban higher education: Considering the creation process of a campus resource room

Abstract

While many community college campuses provide resources of some kind for students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or other sexual or gender-non-binary minorities (LGBTQI+), surprisingly few institutions have dedicated physical spaces designated for that purpose. This article explores, by way of a case study on the establishment of an LGBTQI+?resource room on a community college campus, the processes that must be considered and undertaken when establishing such spaces. Needs assessments, identification of stakeholders, and strategies for making an LGBTQI+?resource room a reality on campuses that have never had such spaces or initiatives are discussed for the purposes of carefully considering the components of a proposed template for campus administrators, staff, faculty, and students to follow. While outcomes described in this article are specific to one particular case, the procedures by which they were achieved were undertaken with the hopes that they might be replicable by other similar institutions, in light of the very few LGBTQI+?spaces in community college contexts.     

College Students' Perceptions of Professor/Instructor Bullying: Questionnaire Development and Psychometric Properties

Abstract

Objective: This study developed and examined the psychometric properties of a newly formed measure designed to assess professor/instructor bullying, as well as teacher bullying occurring prior to college. Additionally, prevalence of instructor bullying and characteristics related to victims of instructor bullying were examined. Participants: Participants were 337 college students recruited in 2012 from a northeastern university. Methods: An online questionnaire was administered to college students. A split-half, cross-validation approach was employed for measurement development. Results: The measure demonstrated strong criterion validity and internal consistency. Approximately half of students reported witnessing professor/instructor bullying and 18% reported being bullied by a professor/instructor. Report of teacher bullying occurring prior to college was related to professor/instructor bullying in college, and sex was a moderating variable. Conclusion: College students perceive instructor bullying as occurring but may not know how to properly address it. Prevention efforts should be made by university administrators, faculty, and staff.     

Occupational stress as it relates to higher education,individuals and organizations

This study examined through survey research methodology the degree to which, faculty, administrators and program coordinators, working in higher education, experience stress at work. The Occupational Stress Indicator was used, composed of four compound factors: sources of occupational stress, individual characteristics, coping strategies and the effects of stress. Preliminary findings showed that occupational stress has a negative impact on the degree of satisfaction with their achievement, value and growth, being strongest with faculty and coordinators, (dissatisfaction with career opportunities, personal growth, skill utilization). Another significant outcome was the dissatisfaction of faculty with the organizational design, structure and processes (communication, change implementation, motivation, supervision style, participation in decision-making). All possess individual characteristics of the Type A Scale; they all considered major sources of pressure in their jobs to be their relationships with others, home/work interface, their need to achieve personal and corporate success. Occupational stress has affected their state of health.     

Faculty mentoring: Applying ecological theory to practice at historically Black colleges or universities

ABSTRACT

This article examines student mentoring at historically Black colleges or universities (HBCUs) through the lens of ecological theory. By examining the person’s human behavior on a micro level and the HBCU on a macro level, the researchers will examine faculty mentoring as a positive influence that assists students in advancing their educational pursuits. Specifically, this article examines how the faculty mentor assists students with navigating the various outer and inner forces that may impede more functional behaviors as they transition to graduate school. This information is important in helping to codify and promote the unique role that HBCU faculty and administrators play in the lives of their students from a student perspective. This article will help to demonstrate why the HBCU experience is not only valued, but necessary in higher education.     

Outness among LGBTQ Social Work Students in North America: The Contribution of Environmental Supports and Perceptions of Comfort

This study examines various environmental factors that may impact a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) social work student's level of ‘outness’ (disclosure) with regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity. An internet-based survey was conducted, comprised of LGBTQ undergraduate and graduate students from social work programs across North America (n = 1,018). Utilizing Pearson's chi square analysis, significant associations correlated between outness and the following six areas: (1) LGBTQ student perception of other students' overall level of comfort with their sexual orientation or gender identity within the program; (2) the number of faculty that know about their sexual orientation or gender identity; (3) the number of students that know about their sexual orientation or gender identity; (4) how supported they felt with regard to their LGBTQ identity within the program; (5) the percent of faculty that are supportive of LGB and Q issues; and (6) awareness of openly LGBTQ administrators or staff members. Implications for social work education and practice are examined, as are suggestions for continued research.     

Contests for Professional Status: Community College Faculty in Sociology

Community colleges are playing an increasingly important and visible role in higher education in the United States. However, the additional attention to community colleges has not produced the same degree of recognition regarding the importance and needs of the faculty within those institutions, who make up about 27 percent of all faculty members nation-wide. This article examines factors influencing the professional status of community college faculty. We argue that understanding the position of community college faculty in higher education today depends upon understanding that professional status is a dynamic and contested terrain, rather than a series of static characteristics. Following Abbott’s (1998) analysis of the efforts of librarians to achieve professional status, we consider how the changing structure of higher education in the United States may impact community college faculty as professionals, both positively and negatively. As one example of community college faculty raising their issues within a discipline-wide professional organization, we examine the current state of community college faculty with the American Sociological Association (ASA). We consider potential status changes for community college faculty in sociology within the context of the broad threats to the professional status of faculty across the higher education landscape. Paradoxically, these threats might result in an opening for efforts by community college faculty to improve their professional status, perhaps in coalition with faculty in other sectors of higher education.     

Indexing stance: Reported speech as an interactional evidential1

The notion of linguistic stance as a non‐grammaticalized form of evidentiality is here explored through an investigation of reported speech in English interaction. Reported speech is found to be one of a variety of resources with which speakers lay claim to epistemic priority vis‐à‐vis recipients. Such resources are not identifiable as stance markers independently of the sequential contexts in which they appear; sequential position is shown to be central in providing at once a constraint on what can be said and a resource to exploit in saying it. Resources dependent on sequential position to index stance are deemed to be interactional evidentials to distinguish them from the well‐documented stand‐alone evidentials. Interactional and stand‐alone evidentials, as forms of deixis, are directed to the orientations of epistemic authority and accountability respectively; their distinct means of marking evidentiality are grounded in the motivation to be explicit with regard to accountability and inexplicit with regard to authority.     

Gender and racial earnings differentials in academic labor markets

This study estimates earnings differentials across racial and gender groups among college faculty, and decomposes these differentials into the components attributable to differences in individual and institutional characteristics and that which remains unexplained. We find that white females earn approximately 4 percent less than white males; black males earn 7.4 percent more; black females earn one percent more; Hispanic males earn 2.7 percent more; Hispanic females earn 1.7 percent less; and Asian males earn 7.7 percent more than comparable white males. We also find a significant earnings penalty for being a naturalized citizen or noncitizen versus an U.S.-born citizen.