Examination of Faculty Expectations of Technical College Administrators as an Important Factor in High Performing Environments

• Main Author: Dupuis, Phyllis A.
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UNO 2009
• Subjects: Educational Administration; Faculty Expectations; Administrator Roles; High Performing Institutions; Technical Training; Community College
• Online Access: http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1099; http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2080&context=td

Popular thought supports the notion that faculty expectations of technical college administrators appear to be linked to the success or failure of an institution at accomplishing its mission. These expectations provide the basis for the development of relationships that foster the growth of technical training and thus the growth of a skilled workforce. Faculty members in technical colleges are responsible for training individuals to meet business and industry needs. Administrators are responsible for efficiently achieving the institution's mission of workforce development. Unknown faculty expectations may inhibit the ability of administrators to achieve the institution's mission in an efficient manner. This project is an exploratory qualitative study of faculty expectations of technical college administrators in a high performing environment. The result of this study increases the administrators' understanding of expectations associated with their role and facilitates the development of an effective workforce training agenda. Five major themes related to expectations of administrator roles emerged from participant interviews: student-, community-, faculty-, administrative-, and attributes-oriented roles as necessary for achieving outcomes in a high performing technical college environment. Study findings reveal major differences in faculty expectations and institutional expectations of the role of technical college administrators. The necessity for reconciliation of these differences in expectations is examined as it relates to the success of high performing institutions. Potential contributions of this study to post-secondary technical and community colleges are numerous. Through the use of Mintzberg's Taxonomy of Managerial Roles (Mintzberg, 1973) as a conceptual framework and actual accounts of eleven technical viii college faculty members, this study seeks to contribute to the training/development of technical and community college administrators, provide a summary of faculty expectations of technical college administrators, identify professional development opportunities to assist faculty in clarification of administrator roles, provide insight into the behaviors deemed necessary for campus administrators to be considered successful, increase faculty job satisfaction and improve morale by providing an opportunity for communication and feedback, and provide insight to current and future leadership development programs and processes.