Perceptions of Employer Socialization Tactics during Junior Faculty Transition into Higher Education

Context: New faculty are expected to teach, be productive scholars, and provide service in order to earn tenure, but few experience the full spectrum of faculty responsibility during doctoral preparation. Recent evidence suggests mentorship and orientation are important during role transition. However, how employers facilitate role transition for new faculty remains unclear. Objective: Examine the perspectives of junior faculty members' organizational socialization into higher education, specifically focusing on mentorship and orientation sessions. Design: Qualitative study. Setting: Fourteen higher education institutions. Patients or Other Participants: Sixteen junior faculty (7 male, 9 female; age = 32 ± 3.5 years) representing 7 National Athletic Trainers' Association districts participated. At the time of the interview, all participants were within their first 3 years of a full-time faculty position. Main Outcome Measure(s): All participants completed a semi-structured telephone interview. The interview guide was focused on the experiences of junior faculty and was developed based upon the literature and purpose of the study. We analyzed the transcribed interviews using a general inductive approach. Results: "Mentors" provided support to assist in the transition to faculty positions on a variety of topics, although formal mentoring programs are identified as helpful only if a "relationship develops." Regarding the second theme, participants noted orientation sessions organized by the institution or department that provided a "clear overview" of the position. However, despite their use, many described the orientation sessions as not providing "essential information" that would have been helpful. Additionally, tenure and promotion processes often had purposefully vague criteria regardless of how thorough the explanation, leading to stress. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that higher education administrators help new athletic training faculty transition by providing mentors and orientation sessions. Findings also suggest that these experiences, at times, are not comprehensive and caused the transition to academe to be stressful.