Location: DM Smith, Room 108 and https://gatech.zoom.us/j/92919822495
"Understanding Faculty Research Productivity in Striving Research Universities"
By Quintin Kreth
Committee members:
Dr. Juan Rogers, chair, GT School of Public Policy
Dr. Diana Hicks, GT School of Public Policy
Dr. Julia Melkers, Arizona State University School of Public Affairs
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto, GT School of Public Policy
Dr. Travis Whetsell, GT School of Public Policy
Abstract: Over the last forty years, many institutions in the U.S. higher education ecosystem have changed their institutional strategy and/or identity to place a greater emphasis on research and graduate education. This widespread phenomenon, termed “striving,” has occurred for many reasons, most notably via strategic efforts by academic leaders to enhance institutional prestige and ensure long-term stability and prosperity. Often overlooked in studies of striving institutions are the experiences of tenure-track faculty, the very people who are expected to make changes to their professional activities in order to increase the research profile of their institution.
This study examines faculty at striving research universities to improve our understanding of the patterns of workload and academic research productivity that emerge in sub-elite research environments, which are rarely examined in the research productivity literature. Critically, support and reward systems for research are weaker and less standardized at striving research universities than at established R1 research universities. This results in a complex system of institutional policies that both hinder and support faculty research productivity at striving research universities – one which is likely to have disparate effects on faculty. Additionally, although the individual and institutional factors that influence research productivity are well known, their interaction is complex and remains ambiguous.
To examine these complex issues, I ask two questions:
- In a striving research university environment, how do individual characteristics and institutional factors interact to enhance and inhibit faculty research productivity?
- How do existing professional ties relate to the capacity for faculty at striving research institutions to increase their research productivity?
To address these questions, this study uses social network and regression analyses to examine a sample of approximately 800 faculty working at 117 striving research universities and matched control group from a national survey of U.S. tenure-track faculty with associated bibliometric profiles.