Looking for signs of community college arts and sciences faculty professionalization in searches: an alternative approach to a vexing question.

To explore professionalization of community college faculty, this study uses data from case studies of searches for full-time arts and sciences community college faculty. The author concludes that there is little evidence of a unique profession and that on a continuum of professionalization community college faculty are more professionalized than K-12 teachers but less so than research university faculty. Further, the author argues that understanding what it means to be a professional in the context of a community college is more important than whether community college teaching is or should become a profession unique from its K-12 or university counterparts.

Several recent studies have addressed the question of whether and to what extent community college faculty are professionalized or constitute a separate or unique profession (Braxton & Bayer 1998; Outcalt, 2002; Palmer, 1992). On the one hand, authors such as Palmer (1992) seek to establish that community college teaching has achieved the necessary characteristics to constitute a unique profession, while others such as Clark (1987) view college teaching as an academic profession with different degrees of professionalization depending on institutional type. Definitions of professionalism as applied to community college faculty have varied and have included such elements as control over the type and number of students taught, access to professional development opportunities, availability of professional colleagues (Garrison, 1967), self-management, independence, self-evaluation, provision of discrete services (Cohen & Brawer, 1991), engagement in scholarly activities (Palmer, 1992), and norms (Braxton & Bayer, 1998). Even though authors agree that some markers of professionalization, such as norms surrounding teaching practices, exist, most are unwilling to conclude that community college teaching constitutes a unique profession. In fact, Outcalt (2002) argues that the community college faculty is more fragmented than ever. That is, he does not see the existence of a common identity among community college faculty. Likewise, Grubb (1999) argues that community colleges claim to be teaching colleges while doing little to encourage the profession of teaching.

In this study the researcher argues that much can be learned about where community college teaching stands as a profession by examining faculty searches. The search process serves as the window through which to examine the rules guiding the hiring process, the critical process in a labor market through which prospective faculty are linked with jobs (Granovetter, 1974). In the process of opening a faculty position, creating a job description, determining mechanisms for recruiting, identifying and applying criteria for screening candidates, and making a final selection, an institution reveals both how it acts on its values and the values of the profession. By examining faculty searches, crucial elements of the academic profession in community colleges can be identified. This study is limited to faculty in arts and sciences fields, as professionalization issues may be different for faculty in occupational fields.

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework guiding this study comes from Burton Clark's seminal The Academic Life: Small Worlds, Different Worlds (1987). Clark believes several dimensions of the academic profession along which faculty work in various types of institutions can be analyzed. First, Clark makes the argument that research is the defining component of the academic profession because conducting research gives professors power to determine important parameters of their work environment, such as what subjects are taught, whom they teach, and what they research. The alternative is control by administrators. Second, he argues that the academic profession is built on a disciplinary base that exerts a strong influence over the work life of faculty. Third, professionalization in higher education is driven by difference and hierarchy. Clark argues that commonness, similarity, and equality work against professionalization. He says, "In the schools, the professionals were 'teachers,' similar and equal. In higher education, they were 'professors,' dissimilar and--not to worry--unequal" (p. 54). Fourth, the nature of academic work varies widely depending on disciplinary and institutional affiliation, with some institutions emphasizing teaching and others emphasizing research. Fifth, belief, commitment, and interest are important aspects of faculty culture that help define the academic profession. Do faculty identify with their institutions or with their disciplines? Further, there are specific ideologies of the academic profession, such as the constant search for knowledge, the norm of academic honesty, and the importance of academic freedom. Do these norms obtain among community college faculty? If not, what anchoring ideologies define teaching in community colleges? Sixth, the degree of authority held by the faculty to control their work lives is an important dimension of professionalism. Seventh, the academic profession offers the promise of a career. That is, faculty begin to see themselves as neophyte disciplinary experts in graduate school where they become initiated into the norms and expectations of a discipline and an academic career. The academic career involves choice of an institutional setting that, in turn, shapes the career. And eighth, disciplinary associations play an important role in professionalism.

Not surprisingly, community college faculty did not fare very well in Clark's (1987) study of the academic profession based on the ideal of the research university. In fact, Clark describes community college faculty as "positioned at the extreme" (p. 203) and as being closer to public school teachers than to their university counterparts. With respect to academic work, he finds institutional mandates diminishing the role of disciplines. For example, community colleges do not hire PhDs with narrow disciplinary interests. Faculty are heavily involved in serving nonpermanent and nonelite clienteles in lower division courses, and they are heavily involved in remedial work and serving the community. Moreover, Clark argues that faculty control over work conditions in community colleges is substantially diminished, and the role of bureaucracy and unions are more prevalent. He concludes, "Astute observers have argued cogently that community college faculty are not in a position to follow the cosmopolitan road to professionalism so heavily traveled by university professors: The community college faculty disciplinary affiliation is weak, the institutions' demands for scholarship are practically nonexistent, and the teaching loads are too heavy for that form of professionalism to occur" (p. 243). In fact, Clark suggests that community college teachers will either become more like public school teachers, a status he considers to be less professional than university teaching, or they will find a way to become more like faculty in research universities. Paradoxically, Clark finds more commitment to an anchoring ideology--belief in open access and success for all students--among community college faculty than he finds in other types of colleges, such as comprehensive colleges and universities. That is, community college faculty know, and are committed to, the open access mission of the community college, whereas the mission of some other types of colleges may be less clear, therefore resulting in less commitment on the part of faculty to one clearly identified value.

This researcher is by no means an apologist for Clark's negative depiction of community college faculty. In using his work to frame this study, his specific conclusions about community college faculty are less important than are the eight elements of the academic profession he identified, which provide a comprehensive framework for examining professionalization in higher education.

Using Clark's conception of the academic profession as a beginning point, this study addresses the question: What can faculty searches tell us about professionalization of community college faculty, particularly about those dimensions of the academic profession identified by Clark?

Methods

A case study of the values, policies, and practices guiding the search process for full-time arts and sciences faculty in three community colleges served as the source of data for this study. As Lofland and Lofland (1995) note, a case study provides a means to study a phenomenon holistically, taking into account institutional context. The three community colleges included in this study were selected based on size, location, and accessibility to the researcher. One college was chosen from a large suburban area, one from a medium-sized town, and one from a rural area. Location and size were key variables in choosing sites because of the potential effect of proximity to labor pools and because of the size of faculty. Each study site also had to have hired more than five full-time instructors in the last 5 years. One of the colleges chosen was a charter member of the League for Innovation in the Community Colleges, which is the closest to a group of "elite" community colleges as there is in the community college world.

Within each site, purposive sampling was utilized to select interviewees. Interviewees included the president, the personnel director, deans of hiring units, and chairs of hiring committees for recent searches in transfer programs at each college. The researcher also interviewed some recently hired full-time arts and sciences faculty members (two at Rural Community College, two at Oil County Community College and six at Suburban County Community College). Following Burke's (1988) interview protocol, the researcher asked questions about where and how positions were advertised, what qualifications were listed as required and preferred, and what factors distinguished selected candidates from those not selected. To analyze data, the researcher first conducted within-case analyses of data using the constant comparative method (Merriam, 1998) looking for themes within major topics, for example, recruiting and interviewing. These data were then used to construct a narrative description of each campus. Cases were compared to identify common themes and emerging patterns inductively. This paper presents the results of the cross-case analyses identifying common patterns among institutions regarding hiring of faculty in transfer programs.

Several limitations of the study must be mentioned. First, the study was based on three community colleges in one particular region of the country resulting in findings that may be particular to this region. Second, this study focuses only on those aspects of the profession that can be assessed through the search process. And importantly, this study was based on participants' recollections and perceptions of searches as they remembered them. Multiple sources of data were used to establish the consistency of perceptions and behaviors, but the researcher neither participated in nor observed searches in process. No follow up was done to ascertain whether hired faculty were in fact effective teachers.

The Colleges

Rural Community College. Rural Community College (RCC) is located in the small community of Rural, Midwest State, population 850. It sits in the northeast corner of the state about 30 miles from the nearest city of any size. It offers courses at 32 sites in eight counties and a major service center halfway between the state capital and State University. The total approximate population of the service area in 2000 was 106,721 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004). In 1999 RCC enrolled 789 full-time and 1920 part-time students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2001). RCC offers primarily transfer programs and does not have a comprehensive array of technical and occupational programs. As of February 2001, RCC had 34 full-time and 204 part-time faculty members. Since it is small, RCC is centrally organized. At the time of this researcher's visit, the organizational structure included the president (who subsequently left the college), a dean of instruction (vacant when this researcher visited), an assistant dean of instruction, and various program coordinators. The administrative assistant to the president handled human resource functions. The president made the final hiring decisions with final approval from the board of trustees. RCC usually conducts one or two searches per year to fill full-time positions.

Oil County Community College. Oil County Community College (OCCC) is located in a small city about 20 miles northeast of a major city. Just off the Midwest State Turnpike, OCCC is easily accessible. OCCC serves a five-county area in the south central part of the state with a total population of 90,000 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). OCCC offers courses at five major centers and other smaller locations in the five-county area, and it works in conjunction with two nearby universities to provide services to two other counties on request. In 2001, OCCC had 137 full-time faculty members and 433 part-time or adjunct faculty. OCCC enrolled 2,263 full-time and 4,903 part-time students in the fall of 1999 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2001). As a medium-sized community college, OCCC's administrative structure and resulting authority for faculty hiring is relatively decentralized. A vice president for academic affairs and five deans oversee the college's transfer and occupational academic units. The office of human resources handles faculty searches and reports to the vice president for finance. During the past 5 years, OCC had conducted approximately 40 searches to fill full-time faculty positions. Deans make the final hiring decisions with approval from the vice president of academic affairs and consent of board of trustees.

Suburban County Community College. The third college in this study, Suburban County Community College (SCCC), is somewhat different from the other community colleges in the state. A member of the League for Innovation, it is twice the size of OCCC and 10 times the size of RCC. It is located in an affluent suburb of a major metropolitan area. The host county is home to several national white-collar service industries. The population of the county is approximately 451,000--a 27% increase since 1990 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001).

Like OCCC, Suburban County Community College offers a full complement of transfer and technical programs and enrolled 4,500 full-time students and 11,000 part-time students in 1999 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2001). In fall 2001, SCCC employed 291 full-time teaching faculty members and approximately 460 part-time faculty. Due to its size, SCCC has a more elaborate organizational structure than the other two colleges. For example, the organizational chart includes the president, executive vice president for academic affairs, vice president for administrative affairs, vice president for student affairs, vice president for instruction, deans, and academic directors. Deans oversee the academic divisions and make the final hiring decisions with approval of the vice president for instruction and consent of the board of trustees. Estimates of the number of yearly searches for full-time faculty varied from a high of 10 % of all full-time positions, or about 29 individual searches, to a low of 6 or 9 searches per year.

Results

The findings are organized around the eight elements of professionalism identified by Clark, although there clearly is overlap among several elements, namely research orientation, disciplinary affiliation, and academic work.

Research

Community colleges are weak on research almost by definition. Their mission as teaching colleges is well known and trumpeted, if not supported, by the research (see, for example, Grubb, 1999). Conversely, research is not emphasized, a point that is discussed more fully in relation to academic work. A dean at OCCC summarized the value placed on teaching: "Teaching is what we are all about. Our people do research, but someone could come here or any other community college and never do research. If they're an excellent teacher, we're going to keep them because that's what we do." Thus, search and selection criteria emphasize teaching and downplay research. For example, despite an excess of individuals with PhDs in certain fields, the community colleges in this study list the master's degree, or in some cases 18 graduate hours in the teaching field, as the required qualification. Only one of the three colleges even lists the PhD, the quintessential degree signaling research competence, as preferred. The master's degree is recognized as an appropriate degree for the demands of the community college because faculty are expected to be generalists who are able to teach lower division courses as well as occasionally teach outside their specific discipline and because they are not expected to do research.

SCCC lists the PhD as a preferred qualification but seemingly more for symbolic reasons than for reasons related to the nature of the job. As one administrator said, "That [PhD] puts a certain stamp of acceptance on you. And, community colleges have, I think, throughout their history felt like they were perceived as high schools with ashtrays. And one of the ways you get around that ... is to say we have quite a few PhDs here." Thus, while community colleges may support scholarly activities, such as conference presentations, the colleges in this study do not seek research skills in the search process. In fact, as one faculty association president noted, "We've not been impressed frankly with lots of people who've done lots of publishing, who've done a lot of journal writing and who've done lots of grant writing and ... we need people here who are real teachers." Despite an excess of PhDs in some fields and a popular belief that community colleges would hire PhDs if they could, only 2 of the 10 recently hired faculty interviewed for this study held a PhD although a couple were ABD.

In summary, the community colleges in this study do not emphasize research and do not seek faculty who are researchers.

Disciplinary Base

Clark argues that the academic profession is built on a disciplinary base. Faculty work and norms for scholarship are based on close affiliation with a group of scholars outside the institution. Outcalt (2002) has argued that community college faculty have become more discipline oriented through establishment of community college branches of disciplinary associations. As one might expect, discipline plays a major organizing role in the search process for full-time faculty. That is, faculty search committees are organized around discipline, although this is difficult at small colleges, and candidates are typically expected to have a master's degree with 18 graduate hours in the teaching field or discipline. Moreover, they are expected to be committed to that discipline; as one dean stated, "We're looking for somebody who has a true love for their discipline and who is excited about it. Sometimes you can see that in their cover letters."

Beyond these expectations, there is little evidence that strength of disciplinary affiliation matters in the search process. In fact, there seems to be a "soft" approach to discipline, as faculty are often expected to teach introductory courses in subjects outside but related to their discipline. RCC's president explained, "For example, our physics instructors will also teach astronomy and maybe geology. The chemistry person might teach earth sciences." This more flexible approach to discipline seems to apply also to the largest, wealthiest community college in the study as well as to the smaller ones. An SCCC faculty member who does have a PhD in English admitted that he likes the more general approach at the community college. He can now be a humanist and teach English, history, and Western Civilization, whereas he believes he would be more boxed in at a four-year university.

Another factor that potentially weakens disciplinary emphasis in community colleges is that, at least for the three colleges in this study, the master's or doctoral degree can be in another field, such as education, as long as one has the requisite number of graduate hours in the discipline. Membership or involvement in disciplinary associations is not a major concern of search committees, but that is not to say that such participation is unimportant in faculty work. Its role may be weaker than in other sectors, however.

Difference and Hierarchy

According to Clark, one of the reasons K-12 teaching is considered less of a profession than university teaching is because there is little difference in status among teachers, whereas there is a great deal of difference among professors at research universities. There are a couple of ways of assessing this aspect of professionalism through the faculty search process. First, there is a great deal of commonness to the search process itself. Each college uses a template for advertising positions, and the process is tightly controlled by the human resources offices, which follow Equal Employment Opportunity guidelines carefully. At RCC, search committees are expected to ask all candidates in a given search exactly the same interview questions. The other two colleges interpret the need to provide the same interview for all candidates somewhat more flexibly.

Second, there is a great deal of equality in starting salaries. In all three colleges, salary schedules result from negotiations between the faculty association (union) and college officials. As the faculty association president at SCCC reported, "What we have now is truly just a hiring, an entry point where we could say on there if you have a master's degree and this is a 9-month instructional position, they'll give you up to 15 years experience. You will start at this amount. And then after that, it's just a matter of everybody gets the same percent raise." The number of years of experience that can count toward the salary schedule is the only point at which hiring units have degrees of freedom to offer higher salaries. Otherwise, all faculty start at the same salary, regardless of field or accomplishments.

There is also apparent similarity among candidates. Search committees typically interview at least three and up to seven candidates for a position, suggesting that multiple candidates are deemed acceptable. In research universities, disciplinary departments vie with their counterparts around the country to secure the best and brightest rising star in a discipline as measured by research products or potential (where they earned their degree, whom they studied with, and such). How do community colleges differentiate among candidates? The factors used to differentiate candidates center around commitment to teaching, past teaching experience, and demonstrated teaching ability as measured by a short teaching demonstration. Additionally, according to one of the presidents, "Equally important [in the hiring process] is the answer to the question of whether the people we are about to hire will embrace the culture of the organization." For RCC geographic fit is an important selection criterion. As a faculty member explained, "If we had two candidates that were otherwise equal and one came from Midwest [state] and one came from Connecticut, we would choose the one from this area. Just because they know the area, they are going to be more comfortable."

Performance in the teaching demonstration plays a critical role in the decision process. As one president said, "It [teaching demonstration] gives us a chance to evaluate not just what we see in the classroom, but if they really did go to the trouble to prepare something and how creative they were in that process." Another administrator added, "They're looking for comfort in front of a group, ability to communicate, organization." Yet another administrator explained how the demonstration helps differentiate among candidates, "But there's a difference with someone who, when given all the same instructions, gives us a lecture on photosynthesis and one guy who gets up and talks and another guy gets up and uses charts, and another guy reaches in his pockets and comes up with demonstration models and breaks it all down and makes it very clear."

Factors that were not considered are almost as revealing as those that were. Neither the interview nor the demonstration was used to assess differences among candidates relative to knowledge of field. In fact, an administrator noted, "As a committee we're not qualified to say 'yeah, they should have that in a biology demonstration'.... We don't know that." As long as candidates held the requisite degrees or number of graduate hours, they were assumed to have adequate command of the subject. Additionally, the status of the institution where the candidates earned degrees plays no role in the screening process. An individual with a master's degree from a regional comprehensive university is considered on the same footing as an individual with a master's degree from Harvard. In fact, RCC might question why an individual with a degree from an elite school would even apply for a job there. Thus, two of the factors commonly used in other settings to distinguish among candidates--differences in command of the field and the status of degree-granting institution--played no role in community college faculty searches at the colleges in this study.

Differentiating among candidates based on teaching is complicated in part because teaching involves a relationship between students and teacher that is difficult to assess in an interview but also because there is no simple way of comparing candidates on teaching, such as a national ranking of departments or faculty based on teaching. In evaluation of teaching, common indicators of differentiation such as status of degree-granting institution and graduate mentor matter little. Because community college faculty are selected for their ability to teach, there is little need to (and no way to) search for the hottest young star in a discipline. Also, although it may be more difficult to differentiate among good teachers, it may be also easier to substitute one candidate for another. This is less the case at a research university, where continued reputation of a department or university depends on ability to hire the best scholar in a particular field in order to compete with other like universities (Clark, 1987).

Another way of assessing difference and hierarchy is to examine the competition for faculty. Were some colleges deemed more acceptable than others? And, were some candidates highly sought by multiple colleges? Colleges did not seem to complain that they were losing their first choices to other colleges, perhaps because there were multiple equally qualified candidates; therefore, getting one's first choice is not viewed as critical. There did not seem to be a great deal of competition for the candidates. Most of the recently hired faculty talked about applying for other positions but usually took the first job offered or did not receive a response from other colleges. For example, a recently hired chemistry instructor at SCCC had been working in Washington, DC, but had wanted, in his words, "to teach at a community college in the Midwest." He applied for nine positions and interviewed at two schools, SCCC and one other. He interviewed at the other school first but was offered the SCCC job first after deciding he would turn down the other school even if they did make an offer.

When offered other positions, differences such as quality of facilities, interpersonal relationships and, to a lesser extent, salary seemed to be the most significant factors in the decision regarding which job to accept. Status or the perceived reputation of the college was not a factor. A recently hired faculty member at OCCC applied for four jobs. One other college offered him a job on the spot (for more money), but he said, "It was a no-brainer to come here.... It was between two schools.... I looked at the people who I'd be working with and, I don't know if you met Dean [Jones], but ... I instantly said, 'I can work with this woman. This a woman that is going to let me work' and then my lead instructor, I just clicked with him." He was one of the few who talked about having multiple offers.

Academic Work

Academic work varies widely among institutional types. In community colleges, faculty teach up to five lower division courses per week to a wide range of students each semester. In addition, faculty typically maintain a set number of office hours per week. They are not expected to do research and get no released time for this purpose. A dean at OCCC explained, "We tell them [candidates] when we interview, and even when I have people inquiring, I say, 'We are not a research institution. Our primary purpose here is to teach. To teach, that's our objective, that's our major goal.' If a person wants to do some research, that's fine, but they have to be in the classroom teaching. We don't give you reassign time or something so you can do a research project and not spend any time in class." Although colleges such as SCCC may give rewards for research, faculty are under no pressure to do research.

Ideology of the Profession

The ideology guiding the faculty profession in community colleges is that of commitment to learning and success for all students. This was noted by Clark (1987) and was evident in the criteria used by the colleges in this study to select faculty. Faculty and administrators (former faculty) clearly identified with the community college mission. They were unanimous in defining characteristics they sought in faculty: an understanding of the community college mission, a concern for student success, and a devotion to teaching. The new faculty members themselves often expressed a commitment to teaching, if not a direct commitment to the community college. For example, one new chemistry instructor explained:

   It took me 6 months [in my former job] to realize what I already
   knew and that other people knew--which was I wanted to teach.
   I finally admitted to myself that I specifically wanted to
   teach.... I wanted to teach at a community college because in so
   many words, I think this is what I am supposed to be doing. I think
   this is my calling, if you will, and therefore I want to be judged
   on my teaching. I didn't want to be at a four-year school ...
   because I didn't want any of the publish or perish environment that
   goes with that or the necessity to do research. I wanted an
   institution where I could teach and be evaluated by my supervisor
   and peers based on my teaching and spend my time figuring out how to
   teach. And high school was not exactly my cup of tea, so
   community college fit exactly the bill that I was looking for.

While the other candidates displayed less missionary fervor about their positions, it was evident that they all wanted to teach. What is not entirely clear is whether their commitment is to teaching or more specifically to teaching in a community college. Several made it clear that they thought the community college to be a good match because they did not want to do research. On the other hand, individuals with a master's degree may recognize that for them the community college is the best option. Other newly hired faculty interviewed for this study seemed more interested in teaching and less committed to the specific ideology of the community college. These faculty had applied for teaching positions at different types of colleges.

Authority

With respect to authority, community college faculty seemingly have more authority for hiring colleagues than do teachers in public K-12 schools (Rebore, 1995) but have less authority than do faculty in research universities. Human resources offices play a significant role in determining the guidelines for job descriptions and application forms, receiving applications, and even screening out applicants who do not meet minimum required qualifications. In all cases, faculty committees review applications of candidates meeting minimum qualifications, select those to be interviewed, participate in interviews, and play a role in identifying the top choices. However, an administrator usually serves on each search committee as well, somewhat lessening the degree of authority of faculty for choosing their colleagues. The degree of authority for hiring decisions held by faculty search committees varies from little at RCC to considerable at SCCC and OCCC. In the case of RCC, an administrator frequently chairs the search committee and the president always interviews the finalists and makes the final decision. At OCCC, deans frequently participate, often as chair of the search committee, check references and make recommendations (based on faculty input) to the vice president for academic affairs. A similar process is followed at SCCC. The executive vice president at SCCC is clear that he can exert moral persuasion in the hiring process, but the main decisions are made at the division level where division directors may or may not sit on search committees. All full-time faculty appointments are approved by the board of trustees at each college.

One additional area in which faculty have some authority is in the setting of the salary schedule. Each of the three colleges is unionized and the salary schedule at each is negotiated between the union (faculty association), administrators, and board of trustees. The faculty association also typically determines how salary increases will be allocated: as raises to continuing faculty, to boost starting salaries on the schedule, to improve health insurance, and such. Although Clark (1987) sees unions as working against professionalism of faculty, it is clear that the faculty associations at community colleges can give faculty some authority in determining salaries and benefits.

Promise of an Academic Career

If community college teaching were a unique profession, we might expect faculty to train for a position in a community college, get a job in one, and either build a career in that college or move to positions in other community colleges. On this dimension, the evidence from the colleges in this study is mixed. Although some of the recently hired faculty thought about the community college when it came time to look for a teaching position, none spoke about planning and preparing specifically for such a career--or of even being aware that such a career possibility existed. Furthermore, community colleges are more concerned about good teaching when they hire new faculty than they are about where a person has previously worked. Only 1 of the 10 arts and sciences faculty members who were interviewed came from a full-time position at another community college (although several had taught part-time in community colleges). An administrator at SCCC estimated that about 20% of new hires come from positions in other community colleges. For the recently hired faculty in this study, coming directly from graduate school or directly from a community college position is not the typical mobility pattern either. These findings suggest that a well-defined labor market, in which many faculty move from one community college to another, does not exist. Several of the new faculty interviewed for this study had worked in business before deciding they wanted to teach.

Due to the high numbers of adjunct faculty employed by community colleges, one might expect a tight internal labor market to exist. That is, community colleges would fill their full-time positions with individuals in adjunct positions who are already trained and evaluated. This did not appear to be the case in this study. Administrators involved in hiring at each of the three colleges indicated that being an adjunct could help, but it could also hurt one's chances of being hired into a full-time position. Although some administrators said they hired adjuncts with an eye toward their becoming full-time faculty members, judging by the fact that only 1 of the 10 recently hired faculty had served in an adjunct capacity at the same college, adjuncts did not seem to have an advantage.

Disciplinary Associations

As discussed earlier, disciplinary associations may be playing a larger role for community college faculty work as disciplinary associations establish branches specifically devoted to community college faculty. However, this particular aspect of professionalization identified by Clark (1987) was not evident in the search process itself. It is left to other researchers to investigate disciplinary associations as an aspect of professionalization.

Conclusion

This study confirms what other studies have shown: Applying traditional conceptions of academic professionalism to community college faculty produces mixed results. On some measures communuty college faculty are seemingly more like faculty in four-year colleges, and on other measures they are more like K-12 teachers. Community college faculty have less control over their work lives than do professors at research universities but have more control than do K-12 teachers. They are not expected to do research and usually are not rewarded for doing so. They are expected to teach five lower division courses per week, resulting in an emphasis on teaching skills in searches. Discipline is important to some extent in the search process in that search committees are typically discipline based; however, the nature of the work of community colleges dictates that they search for generalists who can teach lower division courses and who can teach outside their disciplines.

The community colleges in this study fall down on the "difference and hierarchy" criterion. The nature of the primary task--teaching--coupled with the fact that community colleges are judged by their service area and not by national reputation leads to a de-emphasis in faculty searches on factors contributing to status and hierarchy such as the status of the degree-granting institution, research agenda, and prominence of a graduate mentor. The focus is rather on teaching ability. The trappings of hierarchy and prestige are not used by the colleges included in this study as evidence of teaching ability. The author did not verify whether, in fact, measures used in searches resulted in hiring faculty with excellent teaching ability. Other aspects of hierarchy and prestige may figure into the actual workings of community colleges through teaching awards, granting tenure, and such, that were not examined in this study. Faculty do have authority in the sense that they have the opportunity to, and are expected to, participate in the search and screening process to hire their colleagues, along with administrators; however, administrators play a greater role than is typical of research universities. And although Clark (1987) sees unionization as detracting from professionalization to the extent that it encourages sameness and lack of control, unionization does give faculty power to participate in setting salaries and determining how salaries will be implemented.

Finally, community colleges offer the prospects of a career for faculty, albeit one that may develop differently from a faculty career in other sectors. Tenure is granted after a relatively short probationary period, and community college faculty tend to stay in their positions (Huber, 1998). But unlike other sectors such as research universities and K-12 schools, faculty have not specifically prepared for positions in the community college sector. The evidence from this study suggests that teaching is the professional commitment and the community college the setting where teaching is practiced. Unlike research, where the university is one of the few places to practice, teaching can be practiced in many settings. The nature of the organization and its mission shape how the professional teaching career develops. Community colleges are interested in identifying good teaching and will hire individuals who provide evidence of this regardless of whether they have taught in community colleges or not (Gahn & Twombly, 2001). And, because teaching is a more generalized skill than research in a specific discipline, community colleges can hire good teachers with varying backgrounds; the doctoral degree can be earned later. Thus, the path to membership in the profession of community college teaching may not follow the traditional path depicted by Clark (1987) and established as the academic norm--disciplinary apprenticeship in a doctoral program followed by a faculty position.

The results of this study are not surprising. If one conceptualizes formal education in the United States along a continuum with elite research universities at one end and K-12 schools at the other, community colleges fit somewhere in the middle, sharing some characteristics with each and often serving as a conduit between K-12 and four-year institutions. Particularly with respect to the transfer mission, community colleges are in the middle in every sense, sending their students on to four-year colleges and universities. Applying Clark's conceptualization of academic professionalism to faculty searches is useful in helping to describe further the nature of this professional middle ground.

For community college faculty, the profession seems to be college teaching that is practiced within a specific setting. Should community colleges and their faculty be happy with this status or should they seek status as a unique profession with specific norms, values, career entry points, and such? Community college faculty may not be in a "position to follow the cosmopolitan road to professionalism so heavily traveled by university professors" (Clark, 1987, p. 243), but that does not mean they are not professionals. Although some might like to argue for the existence of a unique profession of community college teaching, it seems that community colleges are well-served by their increasingly important place between high schools and four-year colleges and universities. As a result of their place, community colleges can, and may be advantaged by, their ability to hire faculty with a wide range of backgrounds and prior professional commitments. From the search perspective, the existence of a highly specialized profession might actually limit the community college's ability to fill its full-time faculty positions.

If one accepts the argument that all college professors belong to a larger profession of teaching that has varying dimensions depending on the sector in which it is practiced, then the question becomes not whether but how community college faculty are professionals. The pressing question facing community colleges and their faculty seems to be how they can take individuals with teaching potential from diverse professional backgrounds and orient them to the specific history, mission, and culture of the community college. That is, what does it mean to be a professional within the community college, and how is a sense of professional identity necessary for effective mission fulfillment developed.'? The more general interest in teaching, as opposed to teaching in a community college specifically on the part of new faculty, may make it all the more important for community colleges to pay attention to developing faculty according to important dimensions of the academic profession such as the norms of teaching described by Braxton and Bayer (1998). The alternative is to work toward establishing a labor market in which only faculty members trained specifically for community colleges or who have had previous positions in community colleges are hired for faculty positions. The research reported in this article suggests that faculty need not be trained specifically for community college teaching in order to be professionals. In fact, the current approach allows community colleges to draw their faculty from a wide variety of backgrounds, which may be of benefit to community colleges. However, this approach to hiring faculty places more responsibility on individual colleges and the community college sector as a whole to socialize faculty to what it means to be a professional within the context of the community college.

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Susan B, Twombly is professor of higher education at the University of Kansas. [e-mail]