Faculty Candidates Research Articles

Characteristics of Academic Pharmacy Fellowship Programs: Results of a Cross-Sectional Online Search.

The pharmacy academy faces an urgent need for diverse, experienced faculty members. However, while many faculty candidates may come from advanced training backgrounds, many do not have all of the skills required to transition seamlessly into an academic role. Academic Pharmacy Fellowships are a promising strategy to address these gaps. The objectiv of this paper is to describe the information available online about Academic Pharmacy Fellowships. In this cross-sectional review, a list of programs was compiled from multiple online sources over one year. For each program identified, available information related to the institution, application requirements, and program details was compiled into a database. The quality of the data in the database was evaluated using an analysis of missing values and data to error ratio. A total of 29 Academic Pharmacy Fellowships were identified for the 2023-2024 application year, including 19 teaching-intensive and 10 research-intensive programs. In general, there is variability in the clarity and amount of information available online for these programs and a lack of standardization. For applicants seeking careers in academic pharmacy, there are diverse options; however, there is an opportunity for Academic Pharmacy Fellowship programs to develop common language, timelines, and online presence. Further collaboration is necessary to ensure pharmacy faculty and mentors are aware of these opportunities and are able to connect potential applicants to these programs to strengthen this endeavor.

Complex linear Diophantine fuzzy sets and their applications in multi-attribute decision making

This study utilizes the concept complex linear Diophantine fuzzy set (CLDFS) which is an advanced framework for handling ambiguity in the presence of periodicity for decision-making. Unlike existing techniques, CLDFS offers a larger solution space, incorporating reference parameters α and β. Two real-life scenarios – bridge design selection and AI system choice – are examined to showcase CLDFS’s impact on practical applications. The study presents multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) and multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) algorithms with visualizations, applied to warehouse distributor selection and faculty candidate evaluation. The comparative analysis highlights CLDFS’s advantages over other methods

Essential Qualifications: Accounting Faculty Selection Trends

Colleges and universities are challenged with attracting faculty with the essential qualifications to deliver accounting degree programs that meet the accounting profession’s needs. Budget constraints and accreditation standards further influence colleges and universities hiring trends, particularly in the specialized areas of tax and audit. Before the pandemic, business schools began adjusting their hiring practices to address these challenges. Furthermore, institutions were redesigning degree programs to be consistent with the implemented changes in professional certification exams. The disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on enrollment and operational budgets have exacerbated these challenges. Consequently, institutions may need to alter their recruitment strategies to contend with faculty shortages and provide a curriculum to meet the profession’s needs. This study explored what qualifications decision-makers deemed essential for recently hired accounting faculty. Further, we investigated to what extent particular academic institutional characteristics influenced the selection of an accounting faculty candidate. Finally, this study also reports on the trend in the essential qualifications preferred for new accounting faculty hires.

Faculty interviews—traps and tips

Faculty interviews—traps and tips

Faculty Turnover: It's Preventable

Faculty Turnover: It's Preventable

A Standardized Framework for Collecting Graduate Student Input in Faculty Searches

We present a procedure designed to standardize input received during faculty searches with the goal of amplifying student voices. The framework was originally used to collect feedback from graduate students, but it can be adapted easily to collect feedback from undergraduate students, faculty, staff or other stakeholders. Implementing this framework requires agreement across participating parties and minimal organization prior to the start of faculty candidate visits.

Battle for the Faculty's Soul.

As we interviewed faculty candidates, each asked a similar question: What was the most challenging part of becoming a faculty member in an academic medicine setting? I know the answer without having to think because the scar from the battle for my faculty soul is still relatively fresh. Forming my identity and a picture of what I wanted my work as a member of the faculty to be and mean was (and is) the most challenging aspect of my life as a faculty member. From my first day, I heard rumblings that the institution was embarking on a mission to place a greater emphasis on scholarly work from all faculty—including those in the school of health professions. I observed that the faculty were uncomfortable with this transition and argued the importance of teaching as the focus of being a faculty member. A natural helper at heart (I am a physician assistant after all), I committed myself to teaching and education and labeled any and all other pursuits as distraction and noise. Scholarly pursuits were selfish—existing solely for the game of self-advertising that is promotion and tenure. The game of academia. I eschewed these pursuits as beneath the nobility of being an educator. But as I developed in my facultyhood, I grew increasingly curious about pedagogy. Like a young wizard discovering Diagon Alley, I could sense a world beyond this one that called to my sense of wonder. That call was too strong for me to resist. I started to explore the science of teaching and learning and as I embarked on writing my first manuscript, I noted creative parallels to my teaching practice that ignited flow states and left me wanting to practice the craft of scholarship. I began to take on more projects and explore issues outside my designated work time. Several times, colleagues warned me I was taking on too much and that it was a recipe for burnout, and I worried they might be right. Simultaneously, the rumble between faculty and the leadership push for scholarly work reached a nadir. The conflict over scholarly work felt almost oppressive to me. So too did the conceptualization of my work as a 3-legged stool with education, scholarship, and clinical work as the base—as distinct entities that require siloed time and attention. So often, we are pushed to imagine opposite forces in our lives being in balance. We are often confronted with the notion of work–life balance, for example. And here specifically, I was confronted with the notion of balancing my educational practice against my scholarly work. The premise I perceived was that one would take from the other and that they could not both exist in harmony. Further reflection made me think about reframing this battle of balance. Why a battle at all? Why not conceptualize our work as academics as a garden with scholarly work and educational excellence as inhabitant plant species? The garden will have seasons where one of the inhabitants will need more attention than the other or be more prevalent than the other. But the 2 exist in the space in symbiosis. If a faculty member works to ensure that one nourishes the other, the garden is that much more resilient and beautiful. Thus, the real work of a faculty is in that space of intentional craftsmanship. Six years after the start of my journey as a faculty member, I arrived at this peaceful overlook. During those 6 years, I felt torn in 2 by what was presented to me as a battle for the 2 parts of who we are as educators in an academic institution. What I realized was the noise was not the battle, the noise was outside forces trying to dictate what should be planted in the garden of my work. When I listened to what inspired me, I heard what truly mattered and was able to plan what I thought the garden should look like and how each part might synergistically contribute to my overall well-being and satisfaction as a faculty member. More importantly, I learned that this synergy could be my contribution to making the world a better place. When faculty members open themselves up to the idea that the work we do in seemingly different realms can actually enhance our practice, we arguably do our greatest service to the development of others’ gardens.

The postdoctoral blueprint part one: creating a niche.

Current postdoctoral fellows have a range of career options; however, following a career path into academia can be daunting. Here, we discuss essential elements needed to transition the postdoctoral position into faculty candidates. Furthermore, we provide critical hacks to help postdoctoral fellows to be well prepared to navigate the application and interview processes.

Addressing the Need for Ethnic and Racial Diversity in the Pipeline for Pharmacy Faculty

Objective To analyze the ethnic and racial diversity of faculty in pharmacy, medicine, and dentistry in the United States and suggest how the pipeline for pharmacy academe can be diversified.Methods A retrospective analysis of the representativeness of faculty at schools and colleges of pharmacy was compared to that in schools and colleges of medicine and dentistry. The range of ethnic and racial diversity across top schools of pharmacy, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and newer schools of pharmacy was evaluated for both faculty and students for the year 2019-2020. The ethnic and racial diversity in residency and fellowship programs along with graduation rates provided insight into the available pipeline for future pharmacy faculty.Results Faculty in pharmacy, medicine, and dentistry demonstrated similarly low representation of underrepresented minorities (URMs) compared to their composition within the US population. Dentistry had the largest percentage of URMs (13.9%), compared with 8.5% in pharmacy and 7.1% in medicine. Five HBCUs contributed 32.8% of all Black faculty, yet their graduates had comparatively low residency match rates. The ratio of URM students to non-URM students in post-PharmD and graduate training programs is lower than the ratio of URM students to non-URM students in pharmacy programs.Conclusion Lack of access to postgraduate residency or fellowship training programs is a major barrier to progression to pharmacy academe and impacts URMs more significantly. Barriers to advanced training must be removed or decreased to create the needed diverse faculty candidates for pharmacy academe. Without intervention, students in pharmacy programs will be primarily trained by non-URM faculty, which may impact how graduates provide care in an increasingly diverse patient population.

Faculty Co-Teaching with Their Teacher Candidates in the Field: Co-Planning, Co-Instructing, and Co-Reflecting for STEM Education Teacher Preparation

Co-teaching is a fieldwork model in teacher education used to describe the shared responsibility of educators engaging in the process of planning, teaching, and reflecting to support student learning. While research often describes this model between teacher candidates and mentor teachers, this research examined co-teaching between university faculty and teacher candidates. The research questions included: (1) How do teacher candidates experience and perceive a co-teaching model with their faculty? and (2) What elements of teacher candidates’ experiences during co-teaching reflect the cognitive apprenticeship model of learning? Through this study it was identified that teacher candidates co-teaching with their faculty led to strengthened understanding of integrated STEM education, particularly in STEM content and PCK. Making thinking visible using cognitive apprenticeship through co-teaching led to teacher candidates developing an understanding of STEM education in their personal teaching practice and building their capacity to become confident and resourceful STEM educators.

Characteristics Sought When Hiring Faculty in Family Medicine Residency Programs.

Faculty shortages are a significant concern in family medicine education. Many family medicine residency programs need to recruit faculty in the coming years. As a result, family medicine faculty and resident physicians will be interviewing candidates to fill these vacancies. Little is known about the characteristics valued in a family medicine residency faculty candidate. Using a cross-sectional survey of family medicine faculty and resident physicians in family medicine residency programs in Kansas, we attempted to define which characteristics are most valued by current faculty members and resident physicians in family medicine residency programs during the faculty hiring process. Of 187 invited respondents, 93 completed the survey (49.7% response rate). Twenty-five characteristics, grouped into five domains of relationship building, clinical, teaching, research and administrative skills, were rated as either not important, important, or very important. Building and maintaining healthy relationships was the most important characteristic for faculty, residents, males, and females. Administrative characteristics were the lowest ranked domain in our survey. These results provide an important snapshot of the characteristics valued in faculty candidates for family medicine residency programs. Understanding the paradigm used by existing faculty and resident physicians in family medicine residency programs when considering new faculty hires has an important impact on faculty recruitment and faculty development programs.

The Soft-Shoe and Shuffle of Law School Hiring Committee Practices

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them. ” -Ida B. Wells It is in the spirit of Ida B. Wells, that we seek to turn the light upon the systemic racism of hiring practices. We believe these practices are indicators of the systemic failures on campuses and in workplaces that prevent them from being antiracist. We seek to use this piece as a “tool for exposing, analyzing, and challenging the majoritarian stories of racial privilege.” Our specific intention is to recognize the largely performative nature involved in claiming to be committed to an idea while substantively and concretely ensuring the opposite. This piece is written with specific experiences, patterns, and practices in mind that are directly connected to broader contexts and phenomena. The data and trends on law school faculty hiring, and on the performance of students of color in law school and on bar exams show that acts of discrimination are often obscured by the outcomes of systemic oppression misconstrued as academic achievement. We wrote this not in the often fraught and silencing tradition of typical legal scholarship; but instead drew from diverse traditions that center narrative, storytelling, and satire (both classical and modern). We wrote this to speak truth to who we are, the roles played, and compromises made. Most of all, we wrote this with students in mind. Students are very involved on their campuses and contribute an immense amount of time and effort listening to law faculty candidates. Students speak up when faculty use their teaching platforms to espouse harmful rhetoric and when decisions disproportionately and negatively harm marginalized people. Marginalized students often lead the service and contributions on these issues, while also dealing with the everyday challenges law school presents to the average law student. We want students to know that we hear them and see them. We also want students to know that the burden of these structures is not theirs to carry. We hope that by illuminating faculty recruiting and hiring practices we can empower students to refocus and conserve their energy. Ill-conceived meetings and discussions called by administrators and faculty are distractions that devour precious time. All of our students’ time and energy matter because their lives matter. We recognize but do not accept or assume the risk in writing this piece. We have thought about and have been reminded of how we may face retaliation and other insidious responses. We do not know any Black or otherwise marginalized person in the legal academy whose silence or complicity has allowed them to escape these kinds of harms. Could writing this create more or intensify those barriers? Certainly. But that is why we have said we acknowledge but do not accept or assume the risk.

Perceived Value of Teaching and Learning Curriculum Programs Among Pharmacy Practice Department Chairs

Objective. To determine the perceived value that pharmacy practice department chairs ascribe to pharmacy faculty candidates having completed a teaching and learning curriculum (TLC) program and related activities.Methods. An 18-item survey instrument was created that was intended to capture the overall impressions of pharmacy practice chairs regarding the value of TLC programs, relative importance compared to other accomplishments (eg, residency completion, board certification), and importance of specific activities. Following pilot testing and establishment of intra-rater reliability, invitations to complete the electronic survey instrument were sent to pharmacy practice chairs (or their equivalent) at accredited Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) programs in the United States.Results. Of the 127 pharmacy practice chairs invited, 53 completed the survey (response rate of 41.7%). The majority of respondents held a PharmD degree (90.6%), had been in their role of chair for zero to five years (60.4%), and represented a private institution (54.7%). The majority of respondents who answered the question (32 of 49) felt it was very important or important (16.3% and 49.0%, respectively) that teaching experiences be completed within a formal teaching and learning curriculum program. These programs were believed to be most important for candidates with less than five years of professional experience. Teaching and learning curriculum programs were not deemed to be more important than other accomplishments by most responders. The perceived most important TLC program activities were instruction on didactic and experiential teaching strategies, and experience developing learning objectives, developing examination items, evaluating examination results, and facilitating case conferences or practice laboratory activities.Conclusion. Teaching and learning curriculum programs may provide the foundational experiences needed for pharmacy graduates to stand out among other candidates, although department chairs' perceptions of the value of teaching and learning curriculum experiences varied.

Getting Down With Interviewing Up

For the past 6 years, the Department of Radiology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center has included medical students as interviewers for fellow and faculty candidates. Interviewers are selected by the department chair from medical students who might be interested in pursuing residency in diagnostic or interventional radiology. To ensure diversity and inclusion, selected students include members of underrepresented minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning; and members of student organizations, such as Women in Radiology.

Targets of Opportunity? The History, Law and Practice of Affirmative Action in University Faculty Hiring

Can universities legally employ race- and sex-based preferences in faculty hiring? This Article explores the history, law, and practice of faculty-related affirmative action, tracing its origins back to largely forgotten legal challenges in the early 1970s over universities’ blatant discrimination against women. Since that time universities have developed hiring schemes that are typically hidden from public view and that steer certain minority and female faculty candidates into special hiring processes. Those special processes, euphemistically called “Target of Opportunity Programs” (TOPs), create faculty positions for which candidates are identified on the basis of race and sex and for which candidates from non-preferred demographics are not invited to apply. The legality of TOP searches is rarely discussed openly on campus. While some have suggested that the Supreme Court’s diversity jurisprudence in the admissions context permits preference-based faculty hiring, this Article shows that the diversity rationale travels poorly to the context of faculty hiring. Moreover, faculty hiring, unlike admissions, is regulated by a complex system of anti-discrimination norms in state law, federal employment law, and administrative regulations that appear to tightly constrain permissible employment-related affirmative action. The Article concludes that race- and sex-based preferences for faculty hiring are problematic. They are difficult to justify under the standard diversity rationale, and they seem to violate employment law and an Executive Order governing government contractors by creating the functional equivalent of race- and sex-based set asides.

University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson.

University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson.

Criminal Justice System-Impacted Faculty: Motivations, Barriers, and Successes on the Academic Job Market

US higher education institutions strive to build diverse faculties, yet institutions put up significant barriers to hiring scholars who have been impacted by the criminal justice system ( system-impacted). Because of the demographics of the system-impacted population, these faculty candidates are more likely to be people of color. In addition, system-impacted faculty offer unique benefits to institutions and deserve equal consideration among peers on the academic job market. We argue that making the hiring process fairer for system-impacted candidates is an important strategy for diversifying the college faculty. To understand the challenges they face, we conducted semi-structured interviews of seven faculty with prior felony convictions to explore their motivations for pursuing faculty careers and how they navigated the academic job market. By sharing their stories, this article raises awareness of a marginalized population of faculty and offers new insights into their motivations, barriers, and successes in getting hired. Importantly, we found that deciding when and how to disclose their criminal histories was the most complicated part of the process for our participants, in part because of ambiguous criminal background check policies. To ensure equal opportunity and to form a more diverse faculty, we propose that higher education institutions eliminate the use of criminal history information in college admissions and faculty hiring processes or implement fairer, more transparent background check policies based in best practices.

Revamping of Doctoral Education in Agricultural Sciences in India

Central and State Agricultural Universities, including institutions affiliated to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), are responsible for offering Doctoral education in Agriculture and allied subjects in India. Graduates with doctoral degrees are deemed to be fully equipped to contribute to their chosen career fields in teaching, research and extension. The University Grants Commission’s (UGC) latest move asking universities to start considering the research period in Ph D programmes as equivalent to teaching experience has been perceived differently by academicians. The rationale for such a move by the UGC still needs to be fully reviewed. However, an initial argument could be made that it is an effort primarily to facilitate filling up of vacant faculty positions across India’s agricultural universities and higher educational institutions. As a common standard practice, these universities and institutions require a faculty candidate to have at least two years of teaching experience in order to be considered for the faculty position.

Initiating a research‐focused academic career in chemical engineering: Perspectives from faculty at different career stages

Each fall, eager young researchers participate in the Meet the Faculty Candidates poster session at the AIChE Annual Meeting, and many more apply to tenure‐track faculty openings at academic institutions across the United States and throughout the world. These individuals embark on this journey with the eventual goal of becoming full professors. The process of initiating an academic career and developing a successful independent research program is an arduous journey that involves multiple stages. These stages include being hired into a faculty position, building an independent research program that involves recruiting students and can include constructing a laboratory, identifying research areas and specific problems to investigate, and establishing oneself as a scientific leader of a particular subject matter area within a broader community. Faculty candidates commonly seek advice from mentors or peers who have recently navigated the faculty interview and hiring processes to successfully obtain an academic position. Additionally, they often review the wealth of resources that are available on the Internet and in print. However, it can be daunting to sieve through this collective knowledge base to identify relevant information, as it invariably contains conflicting viewpoints and advice that may be subjective, generic to any research‐focused faculty position, or highly field specific.

The increasing importance of fellowships and career development awards in the careers of early-stage biomedical academic researchers

Excessive competition for biomedical faculty positions has ratcheted up the need to accumulate some mix of high-quality publications and prestigious grants to move from a training position to university faculty. How universities value each of these attributes when considering faculty candidates is critical for understanding what is needed to succeed as academic faculty. In this study, I analyzed publicly available NIH grant information to determine the grants first-time R01 (FTR01) awardees held during their training period. Increases in the percentage of the FTR01 population that held a training award demonstrate these awards are becoming a more common component of a faculty candidate's resume. The increase was largely due to an expansion of NIH K-series career development awards between 2000 and 2017. FTR01 awardees with a K01, K08, K23, or K99 award were overrepresented in a subset of institutions, whereas FTR01 awardees with F32 fellowships and those with no training award were evenly distributed across institutions. Finally, training awardees from the largest institutions were overrepresented in the faculty of the majority of institutions, echoing data from other fields where a select few institutions supply an overwhelming majority of the faculty for the rest of the field. These data give important insight into how trainees compete for NIH funding and faculty positions and how institutions prefer those with or without training awards.