Modifying Faculty Roles to Institutionalize Continuing Professional Education

New functions in the university often begin as satellites, marginal to the core of the academic disciplines and the faculty. With success they seek to institutionalize those functions sometimes by incorporating them into the faculty role pattern. This study examined the receptivity across a university faculty to the role changes associated with continuing education for established professionals. Working with mid-career practitioners may offer an unusual degree of intellectual stimulus and affinity to faculty members. Respondents evaluated the importance of a set of role behaviors, some traditional, some new. Application of multiple discriminant analysis to these ratings identified agreement on several basic values along with four subcultural groupings based on views of applied knowledge and the degree of relationship to an established profession.