An Analysis of Faculty Goals: Personal, Disciplinary, and Career Development Decisions

A series of explorations of faculty goals drawn from a survey of academic careers is described, providing a view of academic career goals as the faculty see them. The study was conducted at a mid-sized comprehensive state university in the rural midwest. Data were collected as part of a 1984 survey of critical events in faculty careers. Faculty were asked to list their short-term and long-term goals and discuss their educational and career histories and provide such basic demographic data as age, sex, and marital status. Information was gathered on the following goals: educational, professional, curricular, teaching, research, writing and publishing, administrative, professional practice and service, retirement, and life away from work. Results include the following: faculty share a common core of goals for professional advancement, research, writing and publishing, and teaching; the absence of goal differences on the basis of sex or marital status is notable; faculty of different ages and different stages of disciplinary, academic, and institutional tenure hold significantly different career goals; goals that are not closely linked to a particular career dimension may need to be studied from several perspectives; and a multidimensional approach to the study of academic careers offers a more complete picture of how faculty pursue professional goals. Appended are: statistics from the survey on faculty career goals; a correlation matrix for all variables considered in the analysis; and a table showing the average number of goals listed in each career stage. Contains 24 references. (SM)