Pharmacy Faculty Workplace Issues: Findings From the 2009-2010 COD-COF Joint Task Force on Faculty Workforce

Abstract

Many factors contribute to the vitality of an individual faculty member, a department, and an entire academic organization. Some of the relationships among these factors are well understood, but many questions remain unanswered. The Joint Task Force on Faculty Workforce examined the literature on faculty workforce issues, including the work of previous task forces charged by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP). We identified and focused on 4 unique but interrelated concepts: organizational culture/climate, role of the department chair, faculty recruitment and retention, and mentoring. Among all 4 resides the need to consider issues of intergenerational, intercultural, and gender dynamics. This paper reports the findings of the task force and proffers specific recommendations to AACP and to colleges and schools of pharmacy.

INTRODUCTION

The 2009-2010 AACP Council of Deans-Council of Faculties Joint Task Force on Faculty Workforce was assigned 2 primary charges. This paper reports the findings from execution of one of those charges, which was to identify mechanisms, resources, and policies that could be developed and implemented within colleges and schools of pharmacy that would enhance the quality of work life of faculty members. Previous studies and task force reports^1,2 proffer seemingly reasonable and prudent ideas in this area; however, many questions remain unanswered, and there is a critical need for further study in this area, especially in pharmacy, but even in the broader arena of higher education.

There are many ways to approach the multidimensional constructs governing the quality of faculty work life. Much has been written on it and related concepts, such as work satisfaction, stress, burnout, work-home balance, commitment, collegiality, organizational citizenship behaviors, and turnover. The large amount of available literature is both a boon and a hurdle to researchers and to administrators looking for guidance. It is relatively easy to find solutions to specific questions, but difficult to approach larger problems whose interdependence still is not fully comprehended. Nonetheless, members of the task force examined a sizeable portion of the literature to identify 4 areas in which to focus its recommendations: organizational culture/climate, role of the department chair, faculty recruitment and retention, and faculty mentoring. Additionally, critical themes related to faculty gender, cultural issues, and generational dynamics,³ are highlighted and interwoven throughout discussion of the 4 central themes of this report.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND CLIMATE

Poor relationships with administrators and/or colleagues often have been cited by faculty members as reasons to leave an academic organization or to leave academia altogether.^4-7 The culture and climate of an organization also has implications for its faculty's demonstration of good organizational citizenship behaviors, general outlook, role strain, stress, creativity, vitality, and commitment.^8-10 The terms culture and climate often are used interchangeably; however, they have different meanings. The most basic definition of culture offered and frequently cited is “the way we do things around here.”¹¹ On the other hand, climate has been described as a relatively enduring characteristic of an organization distinguishing it from other organizations that embodies members’ collective perceptions about the organization, is produced by member interactions, and acts as a source of influence for shaping behavior.¹² Verbeke, Volgering, and Hessels define climate as a reflection of the way people perceive and come to describe the characteristics of their environment.¹³ So, while the 2 concepts are unique, they are highly related, and this paper treats the 2 not as undifferentiated, but rather, as concepts that can be addressed simultaneously with proper study and action taken by colleagues and administrators.

Froh described how a college climate can help maximize faculty effectiveness, making use of intrinsic rewards of academic work to improve its quality and reach new levels of understanding.¹⁴ This would appear in sync with contemporary views of faculty members as “knowledge workers.” As knowledge workers, faculty members often choose a career in academia based at least in part on the desire to become engaged in challenging, yet rewarding aspects of the job,¹⁵ which intersects their need to make important contributions and see the value in their work. Drucker explained that workers in the 1950s were told what to contribute to an organization.¹⁵ Creating an environment wherein faculty members feel safe to question the interface of their values with those of the organization will result in more engagement and will help to align their activities so they are more consistent with the organization's core mission and values.

Building a sense of community among faculty members is critical for organizational effectiveness. Community infers a sense of belonging, togetherness, collegiality, and trust.¹⁶ One concept that continues to gain momentum is “communities of scholars.” These are patterned after “communities of learners” committed to continuous improvement and a spirit of inquiry. Critical to the success of a community of scholars or similar such program is its alignment with the organization's basic principles, or ethos. Mission and values are important and may be used to ignite passion and imbue a sense of quality. Freed, Klugman, and Fife argued for 8 characteristics of effective academic organizations in attempting to actuate a culture of quality, including: (1) vision, mission, and outcomes-driven; (2) systems dependent; (3) systematic individual development; (4) decisions based on fact; (5) delegation of decision-making; (6) collaboration; (7) planning for change; and (8) creative and supportive leadership.¹⁷

Planning for change in academia received considerable attention during the past several decades, as academia began to adopt certain business practices.¹⁸ Due to changing demographics of students and faculty members, more rapid diffusion of technology, stricter accreditation standards, and tightening budgets, academic organizations must be more flexible and adaptable than ever before, and it is incumbent upon them not only to prepare for change but to be well versed in having its faculty and staff prepare for change, as well.

Change planning is especially important as academic organizations begin to adopt more of an entrepreneurial culture. Individuals often perceive the need for innovation because of discomfort with the status quo and organizations also must respond to emerging market trends and financial constraints for resources through change planning.¹⁹ The need to diversify revenue streams and unleash the talent of faculty members permeates the entire academy. Colleges and schools of pharmacy have become more entrepreneurial, with some even owning pharmacies and other businesses that generate revenue, others creating collaborative contracts among faculty members to develop and share the yields from the creation of patents and other intellectual property, and creating dual-degree programs to share revenue. Even so, Wessell pointed out that there is still much for academia to learn from the corporate environment.²⁰ Kezar and Eckel argued that an academic institution, like a business organization, should evaluate its organizational culture before beginning change planning.²¹ They describe unique differences between a collegial culture, managerial culture, developmental culture, and negotiating culture, and describe how each culture interacts with a change process. Sporn observed that administrators will have greater success with and easier implementation of policy when they are cognizant of and consider the organization's culture during decision making.²²

Austin, Rice, and Splete examined 10 so-called “exemplary colleges” identified in part through their reports of high morale.²³ They observed 4 common characteristics among these institutions: a distinctive organizational culture, faculty identification with the institution, participatory leadership, and organizational momentum. The components of a distinctive organizational culture were characterized by having a rich tradition upon which to build: coherence and transparency; openness and respect for differences; and intellectualism that guides all that they do.

Cultures and climates in higher education often appear problematic. Meskill and McTague cited negative language used among faculty members and even administrators regarding new ideas, along with poor strategic organizational direction when discussing quality improvement initiatives.²⁴ Anderson, Louis, and Earle described the climate of many institutions of higher learning as “disturbing.”²⁵ Willson found that unresolved conflicts about organizational culture impede agreement on a planning process and create scholarly anomie among constituent faculty members.²⁶ Allen examined the “organizational insecurity” existing in many academic organizations whose antecedents include lack of predictability, lack of openness, and lack of participation.²⁷

Among the issues that require attention by pharmacy and other programs is that of the tension between teaching and research. Wolfgang, Gupchup, and Plake observed that many pharmacy faculty members believe more weight should be afforded to teaching effectiveness in tenure and promotion decisions, but at the same time prefer a more holistic approach to teaching evaluation than simply conducting student evaluations.²⁸ Austin argued for the need to institutionalize a culture of teaching by making reward systems more equitable, strengthening administrative leadership, encouraging teaching networks within the institution, and implementing more favorable policies and practices to promote effective teaching.²⁹ Still, few if any in the academy would disagree that scholarship is necessary for advancement of knowledge and the profession, discoveries that help patients, and even for the evaluation and creation of best practices in teaching.³⁰ Evidence suggests that departments with a balanced orientation toward research and teaching have the most favorable impact on students’ intellectual growth.³¹

A unique challenge for professional programs like pharmacy is their compartmentalization into subdisciplines. AACP recognizes 8 unique subdisciplines within pharmacy education, and these disciplines originated from basic fields of study unique in their mores, beliefs, and maturation with respect to paradigmatic development.^32,33 Becher argued that differences in disciplines are often ignored in policy decisions, which is problematic for the entire organization.³⁴ Studies on a concept called intradisciplinary consensus suggests that faculty members in “hard” disciplines in pharmacy (eg, medicinal chemistry and pharmacology) differ from those in “softer” disciplines (eg, pharmacy practice, social/administrative sciences, library sciences) in many ways, such as how they approach teaching and scholarship, their outlook on academic life, their productivity, degree of collaboration, perceived equity, and preferences for governance styles.³⁵ The disparity between pharmacy subdisciplines may not be as great as it is in basic fields of study;³⁵ however, administrators must be careful in setting expectations among faculty members. They should be mindful of general productivity rates among the disciplines when setting policy and allocating rewards, while still maintaining equitable expectations and evoking a sense of fairness so that some departments are not perceived as having to produce more or work harder than others. Buy-in must be obtained from key personnel in each discipline and committees must be populated with those representing a variety of viewpoints and levels of experience.

The responsibility for navigating through and impacting the culture of an academic pharmacy organization should not be borne by administrators alone, but must be shared by faculty members. Faculty members must discern the department's expectations of them, strengths and weaknesses of their compatriots, and key persons whose support is necessary to success.³⁶ Faculty members should seek to answer several questions: What is the power structure in the department? Who are the informal leaders in the department and what is their source of power? Can I assume that my responsibilities are consonant with the understanding of the faculty members who ultimately will evaluate me? Schoenfeld and Magnun warn of signals that a department may be “coming apart at the seams,” such as election of a weak chair who cannot lead, loss of several of the most productive colleagues, and assignment of the most important courses to the weakest instructors.³⁷

Issues of faculty age, gender, and ethnicity are extremely poignant in any discussion of culture. Women faculty members have identified organizational culture and gender issues that affect work attitudes. Gibson suggested the need for human resource and organization development initiatives to facilitate the provision of mentoring for women faculty members as an important part of transformation and change in academic organizations.³⁸ This is especially important when women faculty have historically reported sexism and greater likelihood of denial of tenure due to gender issues.³⁹

Considering the previous literature and evidence, the task force identified ideas for imbuing a positive and productive workplace. The task force also recognizes the need for future study evaluating the antecedents and implications of various workplace cultures and climates for faculty productivity and quality of work life. Many of the more rigorous studies on this issue were undertaken over a decade ago, and few have examined these issues within the context of organizations aimed at the training of professional students. Ideas for creating a positive workplace include, but are not limited to, creating a shared vision in which faculty, staff, students and alumni want to know and have a voice in where the organization is headed, as well as creating a sense of community/family atmosphere that promotes a unified identity and allows faculty and staff to function efficiently within the organization. Visit the Journal Web site (http://www.ajpe.org) for further explanation of the aforementioned ideas and other unique approaches. These can be summarized in the following suggestions to colleges/schools of pharmacy:

1. Create a culture that is respectful to contemporary knowledge workers.

2. Communicate in a transparent way to all faculty and staff members the mission, vision, values, and expectations for productivity. Elicit their input on these and other important decisions.

3. Assess your organization's current climate for strengths and weaknesses. Be mindful of the climate as you engage in strategic and/or change planning.

4. Inspire collegiality among faculty and staff members by communicating expected behaviors, rewarding expected behaviors, deterring unwanted behaviors, and creating opportunities for social and scholarly exchange.

5. Create communities to facilitate faculty member camaraderie and those with likeminded interests to share ideas that might generate productivity in teaching, scholarship, and service.

Additionally, recommendations are made to AACP:

1. Support the additional study of the cultures and climates in colleges/schools of pharmacy, including their antecedents and resultant implications.

2. Given the importance of this topic and the paucity of current knowledge, identify a funding mechanism to support a competitive request-for-proposal process to incentivize study in culture/climate and related faculty member quality of work-life issues.

ROLE OF THE DEPARTMENT CHAIR (AND OTHER ADMINISTRATORS)

Faculty members’ quality of work life is highly dependent upon their relationship with the chair. Support from the department chair buffers the deleterious effects of role ambiguity and is instrumental in the success of mentoring programs, and thus, faculty member productivity.⁴⁰ Much of the same things can be said of other administrators in the organizational hierarchy, but this review will focus on chairs.

Chairs typically assume the role without much, if any, specific preparation for the job.⁴¹ The position often is misunderstood and has been characterized as one of the more stressful professional jobs, not only within, but even outside of academia.⁴² The department chair position has been referred to in many ways, including “the hot seat”⁴³ and “the disenfranchised outsider.”⁴⁴ Faculty members experience moderate to severe difficulty in transitioning to their new roles as chair.⁴⁵ The transition often is accompanied by high levels of role conflict, as the chair sets policy within a department but serves as the liaison between faculty members and the remainder of the administrative team. Gmelch and Parkay characterized problematic role changes from faculty member to chair, including from (1) solitary to social, (2) focused to fragmented, (3) autonomy to accountability, (4) manuscripts to memoranda, (5) stability to mobility, and (6) client to custodian.⁴⁶ Chairs often leave behind time for research, ability to keep up with one's field, teaching, and leisure.⁴⁷

Bowman argued that the real work of chairs is to manage conversational inquiry that engages others in creating possibilities and a sustainable future.⁴⁸ He described necessary leadership capabilities, including well-honed communication skills, problem-solving, coaching, transition management, and cultural management skills. Chairs’ ideals for culture and governance differ among disciplines.⁴⁹ Chairs in so-called “hard” disciplines (eg, basic sciences) have demonstrated a greater task orientation and to emphasize research productivity, whereas chairs in so-called “soft” disciplines (eg, humanities, social sciences) are more concerned with shaping collegial cultures. As such, chairs in pharmacy academia governing faculty members in various disciplines may face even more difficulty in managing faculty members with unique preferences, needs, and perceptions of what the chair's role should be.

The roles and responsibilities of academic chair fall under 1 of 2 dimensions: academic or administrative.⁵⁰ The academic dimension includes those duties involved with teaching, advising, research, student and faculty development, and curriculum planning. The administration dimension includes organization of the department, setting goals, chairing faculty meetings, managing the budget, recordkeeping, identifying external resources, managing space needs, and recruiting for department positions. Many faculty members remain unconvinced that the chair role and other administrative roles in academia are worth doing.⁵¹ This is why in addition to development of chairs, there must be consideration for ways of making these jobs more attractive and for developing succession-planning strategies.⁵²

Chairs must be effective at leading change. Leftwich found that departments chairs who have led successful, innovative changes in culture and productivity: are perceived as being highly ethical, possess good people skills and use them to influence and empower faculty, have confidence in their leadership abilities, develop individual relationships with their faculty, and pay close attention to organizational dynamics.⁵³ Garcia underscored the necessity for chairs to be accessible, dependable, and effective, and shrewd managers of time.⁵⁴

Time management is critical, due to myriad pressures facing the chair and the responsiveness required of the position. Poor management can heighten stress. Wolverton and Ackerman identified a 5-factor model common to explain chair stress, including administrative relationship stress, academic role stress, academic tasks stress, human relations stress, and external time stress.⁵⁵ Similarly, Hoffman examined the conflicting roles of the department chair and proffered several strategies for coping, including: develop chair networks for support, elicit department faculty input, perform and share serious constructive evaluations with faculty members, and avoid feeling that all decisions must be made “on the spot.”⁵⁶ Gmelch and Gates observed that chairs who rated their institutions highly reported lower levels of stress, as did those who took on the position more for intrinsic reasons.⁵⁷ Seedorf found 3 main “surprise” challenges for chairs: dealing with people, coping with the bureaucracy, and the negative effect on one's own research productivity.⁵⁷

Among the critical elements to the success of the chair is the establishment of trust, not only among fellow administrators, but particularly among the composite department faculty members. Chairs can gain trust among faculty members in many ways, including, but not limited to, transparency, fairness in distribution of organizational rewards, real praise used appropriately, assisting colleagues to develop networks, giving proper credit, and avoidance of competitiveness with department members.⁵⁸ Faculty members who report significant autonomy and significant influence over their own work environment perceive higher levels of interpersonal trust with their chairs.⁵⁹ Many chairs may be tempted to rely overly on appeasement of department faculty members as a means of maintaining a positive climate and eliciting trust. However, appeasement is often problematic, as “squeaky wheels getting more grease” will eventually engender animosity among remaining faculty members, and trust among other administrators is eventually lost, particularly when the chair has to lobby for exceptions to rules/policies for department faculty members due to unwise promises that were made.⁶⁰

The responsibilities of department chairs and other administrators become even more complex in organizations with multiple campuses employing distance technology for communication. Keaster argues that it is difficult to accomplish anything structurally unless administrators support the efforts of those doing the work on 2 or more campuses.⁶¹ Department chairs must acquire buy-in from faculty members in favor of the change to distance environments and use of technology. A unique challenge is having faculty subordinates on more than 1 campus. This requires careful planning to avoid turf issues in assigning teaching responsibilities and allocating organizational rewards, in addition to facilitating opportunities among department faculty members for scholarship across the campuses, and getting the department to work as a cohesive unit.

As with other major themes outlined in this paper, generational, gender, and race/ethnicity issues are factors that must be considered. Chairs must be sensitive to work-home issues of women faculty members and potential marginalization and ineffective mentoring for female and minority faculty members. At the same time, the chair cannot provide what is perceived to be special treatment to women and minority faculty members, as this could be both insulting to them personally, and could result in loss of trust from/among other department members. There are additional challenges for women chairs, who are often the victims of stereotyping, such as exhibiting irrational behavior, having overly emotional responses, showing favoritism toward other women, and being named to the job as an act of political correctness by the college. One study found that women chairs who demonstrated both male and female stereotypic behaviors were more effective.⁶²

Department chairs should consider the following suggestions; however, this list is not intended to be exhaustive:

• Gather and disseminate information appropriately;

• Use the power of influence wisely and more frequently than the power of authority;

• Seek consultation for strategies to conduct faculty member reviews and assess performance;

• Use participatory governance and situational leadership;

• Learn leadership strategies valued by faculty members in your discipline and in your organization;

• Stay abreast of policies, rules, and procedures at your institution, as well as general knowledge of pertinent human resources management regulations;

• Listen to others’ personal concerns and feelings, but triage certain individuals to professional counseling or other services as needed.

Additional considerations can be found in the Task Force full report at http://www.aacp.org/governance/councildeans/Documents/WhitePaperonTaskForceIssues3.pdf.

Other professional organizations are developing leadership programs, some of which are geared toward chair development and/or aspiring chairs.^63,64 AACP administers the Academic Leadership Fellows Program,⁶⁵ which affords each participant considerable autonomy in their goals for learning. The task force identified a wide array of resources and programs available that current and aspiring chairs may use to improve communication and effectiveness, including several modules, resources, and Web-based programs that should be helpful to current and aspiring chairs, including the CHAIR 101 Series modular program,⁶⁶ the goals of which are to increase the chair's knowledge of university policies, personnel, financial systems, and general university resources; gain practical skills in the day-to-day management of departmental affairs; build a network of contacts within the university for ongoing problem-solving, support, and information-sharing; develop a network of contacts external to the university for support and information-sharing; develop and implement a budget; strategic planning; making appropriate personnel decisions; and guiding difficult conversations. Additionally, there are programs hosted by the American Council on Education that can be linked or hosted onto AACP's Web site.⁶⁷ Programs highlight diverse areas including legal issues, evaluation of teaching, systems thinking, working with the dean, conflict management, and transformational leadership. The task force also identified several other publications that could be helpful (brief descriptions available on the Task Force's 2009-2010 report on the AACP Web site).⁶⁸ Finally, while there is a wealth of literature on how department chairs can optimize their performance; there is little information available to faculty members on how to cultivate effective relationships with chairs and how to use the chair's best talents and wisdom for their own success.

The task force suggests the following to colleges and schools of pharmacy:

1. Offer comprehensive development to chairs and other administrators. Identify and develop future chairs as part of a cogent succession planning strategy.

2. Consider mechanisms to make chair and other administrative positions more attractive.

3. Carefully delineate and communicate a clear set of expectations for chairs, including personal productivity levels, in addition to their administrative responsibilities.

4. Consider the nature of various disciplines within pharmacy when constructing departments for best fit and delineating responsibilities of the chair and his/her constituent faculty members.

The task force submits the following recommendations to AACP:

1. Continue with programming specifically targeted toward chair development. Consider all aspects of the chair's work responsibilities.

2. Offer programming for faculty members aspiring to be chairs, specifically, and more broadly for all faculty members to acquire skills in developing rapport with chairs and understanding organizational dynamics in academic organizations.

3. Post links to various resources and create a clearinghouse of information that can be hosted on AACP's website that will be useful to chairs and faculty members.

4. Support additional studies evaluating effective chair behaviors and the resultant implications for faculty member quality of work life, productivity, and organizational function through a request-for-proposal or similar process.

FACULTY RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION

Recruitment of future faculty members is important to ameliorate current and future faculty shortages. Such shortages create a more stressful environment for existing faculty members and diminish their vitality and productivity. Moreover, careful planning in faculty member recruitment is helpful to imbue organizational commitment to an institution's mission and vision.⁶⁹ Faculty members are the crucial factor in determining the quality of education and research contributed by universities.⁷⁰ The way that an organization plans and implements recruitment strategies connotes certain values to the entire department/organization and can affect morale. This includes, for example, the degree to which faculty have input, the appearance (or lack) of bias in recruitment, and the degree to which recruitment is aligned with strategic planning.

AACP has long considered faculty member recruitment critical to the advancement of the academy and the profession of pharmacy.⁷¹ A 2008 special article reported the findings from the task force, which had culled much of the available literature at the time.⁷² Their recommendations included exposing students, fellows, and residents to the attractive aspects of the academy by building more flexibility into these programs; creating dual-degree programs; expanding recruitment initiatives, such as the Walmart Scholars Program; expanding clinical scientists programs; developing innovative professional practice and research incentive programs; and assessing barriers to academic careers. The task force recommended a number of strategies that had proven effective such as revision of the tenure process, greater transparency in continuing contracts, creation of novel benefit packages, and development of programs that recognize excellence. That task force further identified several areas for study, including the impact of changes of tenure policy and procedures, various works/projects of the Academic Leadership Fellows cohorts, and the impact of part-time faculty members.

The recommendations were further corroborated by the task force on faculty recruitment and retention.⁷² Many of the recommendations were focused on extrinsic components of job satisfaction aimed at the changing demographic and recognition of the evolving values of Generation Y and Millennial faculty members, such as job-sharing, day care programs for faculty members with young children, tenure stop-clocks, and more creative salary packages. These are logical and prudent suggestions. There even has been success with the use of signing bonuses to attract new faculty members; however, this has to be considered in light of the possibility of alienating existing faculty members.⁷³ Further, the implications of these policies have not been tested.

Conklin and Desselle examined domains governing pharmacy faculty member work satisfaction including institutional support, resources for scholarship, unambiguous requirements for promotion and tenure, availability of graduate assistants, collegiality, and teaching environment.⁷⁴ Faculty members were most satisfied with the courses they were assigned to teach and the freedom to design courses as they deemed appropriate; however, they were least satisfied with the availability of time to pursue scholarship and overall support from their institution. Latif and Grillo also found that junior pharmacy faculty members were most satisfied with their teaching roles.⁷⁵ Maintaining high levels of satisfaction with role functions is important; however, there has been little guidance on effective strategies for ameliorating the sources or effects of dissatisfaction. Desselle and Conklin found that fostering research self-efficacy might improve quality of work life.⁷⁶ Promoting self-efficacy (through mentoring or development processes) can be used as a tool to recruit junior faculty members.⁷⁶ When attempting to recruit a prospective student into postgraduate education, many faculty members have heard a response like, “I just don't know. I'm scared of research, and I don't see how I could ever write a dissertation, even if I completed the research.” It might be worthwhile to examine our collective effectiveness at promoting the scholarship of teaching, educational research, and clinical research that may be of great appeal to current pharmacy students, residents, and fellows. It also may be worthwhile to study the impact of various mechanisms for promoting self-efficacy and attracting talented individuals into the academy.

Faculty members have reported several successful mechanisms to promote academia as a career, including the completion of a PharmD project culminating in a paper submitted for peer review,⁷⁷ an academic APPE,⁷⁸ and certificate programs.⁷⁹ There is considerable variability in residents’ exposure to teaching and to opportunities in academia.⁸⁰ The same can be said of the state of doctoral and postdoctoral training programs. AACP called for best practices in recruitment retention efforts and for preparation of potential future faculty members to enter academia. Below are additional strategies requiring further exploration. (More information is available in the Task Force full report.)

• Academic pharmacy APPEs. Little is known about which pharmacy programs offer them, what components are included, and how many students participate. It would be helpful to include example sllabi in a faculty recruitment toolkit.

• Graduate students’ orientation to academia. AACP might consider recommending to the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) that new faculty members, graduate students, and postdoctoral students receive some sort of orientation to the profession of pharmacy.

• Broad visibility and communications. The AACP communications initiative on American Pharmacy Educator Week exposes students to careers in academic life. Best practices in successful programming during American Pharmacy Educator Week should be sought.

• Development of preceptors. Development programs should be offered to preceptors of introductory and advanced pharmacy practice experiences (IPPEs and APPEs) that not only improve quality in teaching and precepting, but also stimulate interest for practitioners to pursue faculty positions.

Other areas integral to faculty member recruitment and retention have not been explored thoroughly. For example, there are few pharmacy faculty members from Latino or African-American backgrounds. Minority faculty members suffer the unintended consequences of administrators’ low expectations, which foster anxiety and insecurity among these faculty members. At the same time, minority faculty members often are perceived as defiant to authority while similar assertions against white males are dismissed as their being “typically academic.”⁸¹

Among the first solutions to this need is to recruit more students from various ethnic backgrounds. Capomacchia and Garmer point out that among the few ethnic minority faculty members in academia, many are at historically black colleges and universities.⁸¹ They demonstrated some success with the Coach Model to recruit minority graduate students at the University of Georgia; however, questions remain unanswered. How applicable is this model to other pharmacy programs? What are the best practices in recruiting minority students, and have effective methods of recruitment been studied? Since there are few graduate programs at pharmacy schools within historically black universities, have cross-recruiting, cross-mentoring, and cross-programming options between colleges at historically black universities and other colleges of pharmacy been explored? It is generally agreed that faculty participation is critical to the success of a diversity strategy in hiring; however, there is no consensus among academicians on the best way to achieve diversity at an institutional or even departmental level,⁸² as many efforts appear overly contrived or mechanical in nature.⁸³

The latter considerations also are important in the recruitment of junior faculty members who are part of the Millennial generation and demand frankness and sincerity during the interview process, but prefer that organizational members refrain from comparisons with the past during interviews or even during development programs.⁸⁴ In talking with younger female faculty members, recruiters should focus on the quality of academic life at their institution, accommodations made for family members’ needs, and job security through either a clear tenure process or other creative contracting mechanisms.⁸⁵

Other factors, such as collegiality and institutional support have been evaluated in various contexts, but not for their roles in recruitment. Collegiality is a driving force of faculty members’ intentions to remain with an organization.⁸⁶ Draugalis underscored this when she added “respect” as a fourth “R” to recruitment, retention, and renewal.⁸⁷ What has yet to be determined are the implications of respect and collegiality on effectiveness for recruiting students and residents into faculty careers and how organizational citizenship behaviors by faculty members make a job in academia more appealing.

Leslie argued for colleges and schools of pharmacy to work together more closely, assess the current faculty workforce, and perform a roles analysis of schools, thus establishing the potential for cross-programming or partnering with other institutions for postgraduate education.⁸⁸ Similarly, Proto and Dzurec stress more interorganizational collaboration, leveraging local networks, aligning stakeholder priorities, and acting persistently as important strategies for successful recruitment.⁸⁹ Matier found that the most influential factors for faculty members in choosing an organization are institutional/department reputation, research opportunities, teaching assignments, career advancement opportunities, congeniality of associates, and rapport with departmental leaders.⁹⁰

Aspects of recruitment often overlooked are the processes of advertising and interviewing, with little forethought into successful strategies. Evidence suggests little correlation between a person's performance in an interview with their future job performance.⁹¹ Three errors often made during the recruitment process are: (1) making a judgment about a candidate within 5 minutes of meeting them then spending the remaining time confirming that judgment, (2) systematically overrating a response construed as negative, and (3) generalizing from particulars to make global judgments about the overall qualifications of a candidate. Search committees are advised to take a “person-environmental” approach to evaluating prospective candidates.⁹²

Colleges and schools of pharmacy must examine effectiveness in hiring, not just recruitment strategies. Maine offered excellent suggestions for programs to advertise positions, conduct interviews of candidates, “close the sale,” and allocate appropriate start-up funds during a clear and transparent initial negotiation and contracting process.⁹³ Candidates have suggested that opportunities for research, teaching, and career advancement, along with department goals are most important, yet this information is not readily available or is unclear during the interview.

Much has been written on faculty member recruitment; however, there is still much to be learned, and there must be additional study of these issues. The task force reiterates the following critical suggestions on faculty member recruitment to colleges and schools of pharmacy:

1. Encourage development of various training opportunities in teaching and scholarship, and foster exposure by PharmD students, residents, and graduate students to the benefits of academic worklife.

2. Examine best practices in all aspects of the recruitment process, which include writing accurate job descriptions, using effective advertising strategies, executing successful interviews, making effective hire decisions, and evaluating past successes and failures.

3. Implement policies that consider the needs of contemporary faculty members that will not only engender retention and productivity, but also lead to successful recruitment efforts.

4. To increase the diversity and the quality of the applicant pool, examine current policies to increase the diversity of professional students, residents, and graduate students.

The Task Force similarly reiterates recommendations to AACP:

1. Collect and disseminate best practices for faculty member recruitment within and outside of pharmacy.

2. Collect information on the practices of other colleges and schools’ for job design, salary incentives, and organizational rewards (intrinsic and extrinsic) systems that enhance the attractiveness of pharmacy academic careers.

3. Work with other organizations to identify opportunities for exposure for professional and postgraduate students to teaching, scholarship, and service activities.

MENTORSHIP

The literature is replete with studies demonstrating the benefits of both informal and formal mentoring programs. Formal mentoring programs have been associated with faculty member job satisfaction, commitment, reductions in turnover, and productivity.⁹⁴ The detractors of formal mentoring programs argue that informal, “self-germinating,” or “organic” mentoring relationships are more likely to last; however, when structured appropriately, formal mentoring programs are successful. Further, the existence of formal mentoring programs and the inevitable informal mentoring that occurs among colleagues are not mutually exclusive.

Much of the mentoring literature addresses appropriate behaviors by the mentor to facilitate successful mentor-mentee relationships. Mount and Barrick⁹⁵ described the 5-factor model of strong mentorship. These 5 factors (emotional stability, extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) are the quintessential goods in a mentor's toolbox. Johnson proposed a framework for conceptualizing the competence of a mentor.⁹⁶ His triangular model includes character virtues (eg, integrity and prudence), intellectual/emotional abilities (eg, communication skills, emotional balance), and knowledge and skills (eg, competencies, self-awareness). Johnson points out that, in addition to senior faculty members, the mentoring potential of junior faculty members should be considered as well. He adds that mentoring requires a faculty mentor to engage in a dynamic, emotionally connected, and reciprocal relationship with the mentee that includes frequent interaction, successful collaboration, and social activities. The 2 elements identified as fundamental and distinguishing from superior-subordinate relationships are reciprocity/mutuality and accomplishment of an identity transformation, as the mentee advances from neophyte to equal. This view is underscored by McCauley in a discussion of transference and countertransference in mentoring.⁹⁷ Transference occurs when an individual, usually subconsciously, treats a current relationship as though it were an important relationship from the past. From the mentor's perspective, functional transference occurs when there is respect for the mentor (positive) and assertion of personal identity (negative transference, but still functional and appropriate) by the mentee. Dysfunction occurs when the mentee becomes “over-awed” by the mentor or when the mentee becomes overly draining of the mentor's time and energy. Functional countertransference occurs with a benevolent desire to develop the mentee, but also when the mentor expresses negative emotions and allows the mentee to gain independence after an appropriate amount of time. Dysfunction occurs when the mentor colludes with the mentee or victimizes him/her in the organization. Johnson, Huwe, and Lucas point out 20 rational behaviors by mentors for productive relationships, but also some irrational beliefs of mentors, which include: “I must be successful with all of my mentees all of the time” and “My mentee must never leave or disappoint me.”⁹⁸ Busch points out a number of potential pitfalls in mentor-mentee relationships, including: attempts at cloning, taking credit for the mentee's work, not keeping commitments, becoming possessive of the mentee's time, mentors believing that each mentee must be equally hard-working and high-achieving, mentees not taking feedback seriously, and mentees becoming envious and resentful of the mentor's accomplishments.⁹⁹

Tepper, Shaffer, and Tepper identified the latent structure of 16 putative mentoring activities, identifying a 2-factor model of psychosocial and career-related mentoring functions.¹⁰⁰ The psychosocial mentoring domain consisted of items such as encouraging the mentee to try new ways of behaving on the job, serving as a role model, sharing personal experiences, and conveying feelings of respect toward the mentee. The career-related mentoring functions domain included items such as encouraging preparation for advancement, giving assignments that increase contacts with higher-level administrators, helping the mentee to meet new colleagues, and collaboration on a teaching or research project. Certain individuals will be better at some aspects of mentoring than others. Erkut and Mokros revealed that individuals are strongest in providing feedback on the quality of the mentee's work and showing interest in the mentee's personal growth.¹⁰¹ In descending order, they showed mentors’ lower proclivity to provide technical expertise, provide moral support, and help the mentee establish connections.

In addition to the many challenges faced by faculty members of all stripes, junior faculty members have an especially difficult time adjusting to their new careers. Part of this may be generational, as new faculty members may have different conceptualizations and expectations from a relationship than the faculty members who mentor them. The literature provides relatively little guidance in this specific area, and studies evaluating the effect of generational dynamics on mentoring effectiveness are warranted. The challenges are especially problematic for female faculty members. Women receive mentoring less frequently and less effectively than their male counterparts, and thus are left to rely on less effective power bases.¹⁰² This may be attributable to nagging attitudes about women who are misjudged to be less career-focused and the fact that faculty members in higher education are still predominately male. These same problems may be heightened even further for African-American and Latino faculty members, who are even rarer in pharmacy academia. The design of formal mentoring programs should consider additional barriers faced by these faculty members, with special attention afforded to the need for them to find formal or informal mentors who share common characteristics and interests but also to their need to make important connections and be assigned team-oriented responsibilities with persons composing important power bases, who frequently will be white males. There also should be a study dedicated to the effectiveness of various mentoring program structures and relationships for faculty from ethnic minorities.

The task force identified characteristics that best suit an individual for the role of mentor. While the department chair should inherently be providing mentoring and guidance, it is best to avoid appointment of the chair or other person as a formal mentor for various reasons, including the potential for conflict of interest in what might be best for the mentee versus that of the department. Positive qualities for good mentors include but are not limited to¹⁰³:

• Commitment to mentoring and to the organization

• Professional competence (research, teaching, practice, service)

• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and listening skills

• Has interests that align with the mentee (not just or necessarily research interests, alone)

• Demonstrates willingness to learn and reciprocate in the mentor-mentee relationship

• Sets reasonably high standards for self and for others

• Enthusiastic about his/her discipline

• Open-minded and culturally sensitive

• Good knowledge of the profession and the Academy

• Reflective, particularly as what it means to be a scholar

• Inspires confidence in others

The task force also recognizes characteristics among prospective mentees that will facilitate their likelihood of success in a mentoring program and when embarking upon an academic career, which include but are not limited to:

• Willingness to participate in development opportunities

• Recognition of the need for self-growth

• Self-awareness and the ability to self-assess strengths/weaknesses

• Receptiveness to feedback and coaching

• A record of seeking and accepting challenging assignments

• Ability to perform in more than one major skill area and understands the complexities of an academic career

• Cautious but trustful of mentor and others aiming to provide help

The task force offers the following best practices in structuring a formal mentoring program based on a review of the literature and an examination of well-documented successful efforts in mentorship programs at multiple institutions. (Additional strategies are given in the task force full report.)

• Input should be sought from a wide variety of sources when developing a mentoring program, including but not limited to administrators, faculty members, colleagues from other departments/programs within the institution, and experienced persons at other institutions involved with successful mentoring programs.

• Mentoring programs should be holistic and involve mentoring faculty members on a career level as opposed to focusing only on one area such as research productivity. The mentee can develop other focused mentoring relationships to meet specific developmental needs (eg, research, teaching, practice), which may be facilitated by the career mentor.

• Mentoring programs should identify specific goals for mentors, mentees, and the department/college/school/institution as a whole.

• The institution should identify specific eligibility criteria for all participants, including but not limited to mentees, career mentors, facilitators, and advisors. Participation as a mentee may be an expectation for junior faculty members; however, even well-seasoned faculty members might benefit from mentoring. It is even possible that a faculty member be mentored in one area and provide mentoring in another area.

• Mentors should be trained on various aspects of mentoring, including but not limited to career networking, developing rapport/collegiality, establishing ethical research standards, teaching pedagogy, and avoiding mentoring pitfalls.

Best practices for mentoring programs suggest that there be specific goals in mind for the institution, mentor, and mentee. The goals are best designed by key stakeholders in the department/institution and should be periodically updated and revised with input from junior faculty members. While several examples of goals are listed below, more can be found in the task force full report.

• Orient new faculty members to the administrative structure and organizational culture of the department, college/school, and university

• Promote and encourage faculty development in teaching, scholarship, and service

• Align resources to support and promote faculty development

• Develop role-modeling behaviors among senior and junior faculty members

• Provide an opportunity for mutually beneficial and personally rewarding relationships

• Provide resources for women faculty members and faculty members from various racial/ethnic minorities in dealing with additional challenges and stressors they are known to face

A mentorship program should be routinely evaluated for its effectiveness. Indicators of success should be identified by appropriate stakeholders at each institution and can include the following:

• Teaching effectiveness of mentees

• Research productivity of mentees and mentors

• Mentees’ contributions in college/school, university, professional, and civic service

• Tenure, promotion, and recognition (local and national) of participants

Additional examples of what marks a successful mentorship program are provided in the full report.

The task force identified a number of resources and Web sites that might be helpful for the development of mentorship programs. (Complete list available at http://www.aacp.org/governance/councildeans/Documents/WhitePaperonTaskForceIssues5.pdf.) These are not necessarily the best sites and programs, as no attempt was made to evaluate or benchmark one program against another.

The Task Force suggests the following for colleges and schools of pharmacy:

1. Consider development of a formal mentoring program for faculty members; consult available resources for strategies that will be most effective at your institution.

2. Train faculty members to be effective mentors and mentees.

The following recommendations are made to AACP:

1. Implement programming on best practices for structuring a successful mentoring program, with special consideration given to issues of gender, race/ethnicity, and intergenerational dynamics in mentoring.

2. Develop a toolkit for junior faculty members that would be broadly applicable to those of various types of academic institutions.

SUMMARY

The task force recognizes the difficulty and interconnectedness of various issues facing pharmacy academia and higher education in general. The 4 major areas identified have considerable overlap yet each contributes uniquely to the challenges and opportunities faced by present and future pharmacy faculty members. The task force hopes that this report and the resources provided within can assist pharmacy administrators and faculty members at all levels of academia and across all disciplines and types of institutions.