Module Components

• Overview
• Assignments

Topics

• The Teaching Triad: Teaching, Research/Scholarship, and Service
• The Boyer Model
• Faculty Evaluation
• Promotion

NRSG 794 - Introduction to the Nursing Faculty Role

Module 3: The Nursing Faculty Role

The Teaching Triad: Teaching, Research/Scholarship, and Service

When one thinks of the role of faculty members, typically one thinks of teaching.

Modern institutions of higher education have a very long history of traditions, including how they are structured, how they do the work of teaching students, and who teaches the students. When asked what faculty members do, most people would say “teach”. Yes, faculty members do usually teach, but the faculty role encompasses much more than just teaching!

Across disciplines, the very broad view of the faculty role spans three components: Teaching, Research/Scholarship, and Service. Many faculty preparation programs offer a general overview of faculty roles and responsibilities with examples of activities in these three components. You will see models with each of these three components taking up approximately 1/3 of the time. The emphasis of each of these three components varies widely, however, depending on the faculty members’:

• position and rank;
  
• tenure;
  
• profession; and
  
• the type of institution.

Service:  For example, in nursing, service to the profession can encompass a range of activities, from peer reviewing manuscripts for a nursing or professional journal, serving in a leadership role in a voluntary health organization (e.g. American Heart Association, Komen Foundation), serving on a Board, to engaging in actual clinical practice. Types of institutions can range from a community college with nursing as a department to a doctoral degree granting, research intensive, large university. Our school of nursing here at UMSON is part of UMB, which is an example of the latter.

Teaching:  Teaching is often thought of as only the actual time spent in the classroom, online course, skills lab, or in other individual learning experiences, but this is just one part of the busy faculty role. Nursing faculty also participate in developing the curricula and the courses of nursing programs at all levels (AA, BSN, MS, DNP, PhD). They get courses approved by the institutional committees charged with assuring their quality and fit with standards, they select the most appropriate learning environment – classroom, online, blended, clinical, etc., and develop all the content of the course. They select appropriate teaching strategies for teaching content as well as appropriate methods of assessing learning and evaluating performance. They also provide remediation and alternate learning experiences, and participate in evaluation of the courses and program.

Research/Scholarship:  Scientific inquiry with research studies is the major method in this area. In years past, it used to be the gold standard of scholarship which severely limited how most nursing faculty, except for those with PhD degrees and research training, could meet criteria in this area. That was until the late 20th century when some new perspectives dramatically changed the definition of scholarship to include many avenues of dissemination, quality improvement projects, consultations, and creative academic works.

Reflection Question:  Reading through various faculty’s thoughts about what they love (and don’t love) about their roles, which basket (teaching, research/scholarship, or service) do their individual comments fall? Is there a pattern, or do they differ?  https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/8203-professor-jobs.html

Source:  Business News Daily, 2/21/23