ABSTRACT
This chapter provides readers with a broad overview of today’s faculty and the context in which they work. The nature of the faculty and of faculty work are changing, as technology plays a greater role, budgets are constrained, and pressures for accountability and efficiency grow. The structure of the faculty as a body is also changing, with new categories of faculty employment (e.g., clinical, full-time non-tenure-track) that have implications for the makeup of faculty work and the faculty’s influence in higher education. The composition of the faculty is changing in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and categories of employment. Faculty work in a wide variety of college and university settings, and the requirements of faculty work in each of these settings vary just as widely. Different institutional types have different missions and different expectations of how faculty time is calculated, as well as how it is allocated as a result.
