Faculty Development

Age of the Scholar

During the Age of the Scholar (1950s and early 1960s), the term faculty development referred primarily to practices for improving and advancing scholarly competence. The key goal of professional development was to help faculty maintain currency in their discipline and to enhance their content expertise through sabbaticals, leaves, and fellowships, often to support completion of advanced degrees. Few colleges and universities had formal development programs, and there were few studies of faculty development outcomes or impacts.

Age of the Teacher

The emergence of faculty development programs during the Age of the Teacher (1960s–1970s) reflected a realization that faculty should not only be better prepared in their disciplines but also better able to teach. Thus, the goal of enhancing faculty’s disciplinary expertise expanded to emphasize the development and renewal of faculty as teachers. Support from private foundations spurred campuses to begin creating teaching support units or tasking a faculty member or administrator with overseeing teaching development activities. Faculty development also secured a professional identity in the United States through the founding of the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education in 1976, the oldest and largest professional association for faculty developers in the world.

Age of the Developer

The 1980s were an important decade of growth for faculty development in the United States and abroad. The Age of the Developer (1980s) describes a decade in which the numbers of faculty developers and teaching centers increased as did the demands on the profession. Faculty developers were called upon not only to support the growth of individual instructors but also to address faculty needs at different career stages, collective faculty growth (e.g., faculty learning communities), and curricular issues. Institutions responded to national reports expressing concerns about student learning [Page 508]by devoting more resources toward the creation of teaching centers. By the end of the 1980s, approximately half of 4-year colleges, universities, and professional schools in the United States offered some formal faculty development, instructional development, or teaching improvement services. Expansion of faculty development centers occurred internationally as well, with countries such as Australia, Canada, and South Africa creating their own societies for teaching and learning in higher education. Despite this growth in faculty development centers and professional associations, few programs were rigorously evaluated.

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