Faculty cultures, faculty values

A history of late twentieth-century American higher education could not avoid describing the diversity of institutional types and the plethora of disciplines, fields, and specialties. The insightful sociologist Burton Clark (1985, p. 41) highlights this diversity when he discusses " the endless number of churches and sects " produced by disciplinary distinctions and further divided by the variety of colleges and universities. Indeed, nearly twenty years ago, Light (1974, p. 14) proclaimed that " the academic man [or woman] is a myth. " That is, distinct disciplinary histories, ways of doing work, and career lines have created diverse professions among academics (Ruscio, 1987); additionally, particular institutional missions have resulted in variation across faculty priorities and workload (B. Clark, 1985, 1987). Furthermore, faculty members' gender, race, and class affect their experience. They work in a " master matrix " (B. Clark, 1984) where they belong to " an array of groups "-a discipline and department , a specific college or university, a national system of higher education, and a profession (S. Clark, 1986, p. 26). Kuh and Whitt (1988, pp. 12-13) define culture as " the collective, mutually shaping patterns of norms, values, practices, beliefs, and assumptions that guide the behavior of individuals and groups. " Additionally, they explain that culture is " an interpretive framework for understanding and appreciating events and actions " (1988, p. 13). Given this definition, it is clear that faculty not only belong to various groups, in fact, they also live and work in at least four (and often more) cultures. As " interpretive frameworks , " these cultures affect how faculty interact with students, conceptualize and organize their work, participate in institutional decision making, and balance disciplinary and institutional responsibilities.