Abstract & Overview
I. Introduction Faculty members have been described as purveyors of culture, engines of economic development, and generators of scientific, medical, and technological discoveries that transform human society (Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006). They have been characterized as institutional agents who can foster the development of social and cultural capital, particularly within and among historically disadvantaged communities (Stanton-Salazar, 1997). Faculty have been at the forefront of social change movements, and have been viewed as teachers and mentors who can empower students to achieve their highest potential (Kingston-Mann & Sieber, 2001). But faculty have also been described, by critics, as scam artists who focus on self-interested agendas at the expense of the education of tuition-paying students (Sykes, 1988). Collectively, faculties and their academic disciplines have been defined by some postmodernists as closed communities that endorse only certain forms of knowledge generation, primarily those forms that reinforce the power positions of well-established interests within those disciplines (Foucault, 1986). Recently, faculty have been characterized as managed professionals, whose autonomy has been eroded by extensive accountability-oriented measurement systems (Rhoades, 1998) and by a rising managerialism among college and university administrators, who now are more likely to make major decisions without faculty input (Bess, 2006). These various images and metaphors suggest that expectations for the academic profession have become highly differentiated and fragmented. No longer does a quick reference to teaching, research, and service suffice to explain the work of the faculty member. Faculty roles have become increasingly complex and challenging, both for individuals to carry out and for institutions to support. Despite the multitude of images and descriptors associated with academic work, one commonality is that faculty members are people who have human needs for growth, achievement, satisfaction, and connection with others (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Faculty development programs can play an important role on college and university campuses by acknowledging the human needs of faculty members, and by providing the resources, social networks, and innovative ideas that can foster the fulfillment of those needs. This paper reports on an innovative faculty development program that focused its energies on the idea that fulfilling the human needs of faculty members is an essential prerequisite for ongoing growth and success within the academic profession. Many faculty development programs are organized around meeting functional needs, rather than human needs. These programs, many based in centers for teaching and learning, focus on the functional roles that faculty perform, and attempt to identify key areas within those functions that present unique challenges for faculty (e.g., teaching with technology or assessing students' writing). These functional needs are sometimes identified systematically through a survey of faculty members, but more often the needs are identified by a faculty committee, or by an academic administrator charged with responsibilities for faculty development (Sorcinelli, Austin, Eddy, & Beach, 2006). Once the functional needs have been identified, programs and services are designed to identify and convey a set of skills that can be used to improve performance within a given function (Akerlind, 2005). The programs may be tailored to fit the needs of particular faculty groups, such as junior faculty or discipline-specific issues (e.g., teaching large lecture courses in the sciences). Although these programs may acknowledge different needs by career stage and by academic discipline, they typically are not organized around foundational human needs. The goal of many of these faculty development programs is to teach faculty, for example, how to use technology or how to assess students' writing, rather than to fulfill faculty members' needs for growth, achievement, and collegial connection. …