ABSTRACT
Climate is institution- or campus-specific but can also vary depending on college or department. This chapter distinguishes between culture and climate and outlines how these impact the experiences of early career faculty, makes recommendations as to how readers can assess the culture before being hired or soon afterward, and gives them tips for how to work within one’s particular culture and climate. It examines influences on culture and climate—such as discipline and institutional type, the academic culture, minority-serving-institution status, structural diversity, and other variations within an institution—can affect the faculty career. Merton offered a distinction between cosmopolitans and locals in regard to community influences that many analysts have adopted to describe faculty; that distinction is instructive. When a cultural mismatch exists, for whatever reason, faculty members often need to develop code-switching behaviors—that is, using behaviors and espousing values of the dominant culture that are contrary to a person’s identity.
