Faculty Development in SACS-Accredited Community Colleges

Abstract

This article presents the results of an exploratory study of community college faculty development activities. The purpose of the study was to determine if community colleges evaluate faculty development efforts and use the results to shape a coherent faculty development plan that supports the mission of the institution. The community colleges in this study clearly relied on traditional approaches to faculty development and made minimal efforts at evaluation, preferring to rely on untested assumptions and past practices. Their efforts tend to be unfocused, with little or no attempt to deliberately connect activites to the institutional strategic plan. With increasing calls for accountability coupled with shrinking resources, it becomes imperative that community colleges demonstrate that they wisely use their resources to impact the mission of the institutions. This means that community colleges must develop focused faculty development programs that have clear and distinct goals that are intended to improve classroom learning and teaching.