Term of Award

Fall 2006

Degree Name

Doctor of Education in Education Administration (Ed.D.)

Document Type and Release Option

Dissertation (open access)

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Department of Leadership, Technology, and Human Development

Committee Chair

Michael D. Richardson

Committee Member 1

Cordelia Zinskie

Committee Member 2

Lucindia Chance

Committee Member 3

Doug Keskula

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the characteristics and workload of full-time faculty in baccalaureate dental hygiene programs. A mail questionnaire was sent to program administrators for distribution to faculty. Program response rate was 89.7% (26/29) and full-time faculty response rate was 68.3% (114/167). The number of faculty who hold the Associate or Assistant Professor ranks was similar (35.1% and 34.2%, respectively). Forty percent of faculty are not on tenure track and 38.6% are tenured. Faculty were most likely to be White (94%) and female (96%) with an average age of 50.2 years. Faculty reported levels of dissatisfaction with time available for student advisement, time available for class preparation, workload, time available to keep current in field, and salary. About 56% (39-70) of the faculty plan to retire from the labor force in 10 years or less. Faculty reported an average work week of 50.5 hours, which includes 46.9 hours spent on paid activities and 3.6 hours spent on unpaid activities. In specific workload activities, the allocation of faculty time was 56.8% on teaching undergraduate students, 14.9% on institutional service, and 9.5% on research/scholarship. 47 percent of the faculty described their primary professional research as program/curriculum design and 78% were not engaged in funded research. The average number of professional presentations outnumbered all other types of scholarly activity/publications. Faculty spent significantly more time than they preferred on teaching undergraduate students and on institutional service. Faculty spent significantly less time than they preferred on teaching graduate/first professional students, on research/scholarship, on professional growth, and on public service. Faculty in Masters institutions spent significantly more time in Public Service than those in Doctorate and Specialized institutions. Several conclusions were made based on findings: there is a lack of diversity within the dental hygiene profession in regards to underrepresented minorities and males; there will be a noticeable shortage of dental hygiene faculty as current faculty age and retire; there is a lack of information regarding dental hygiene faculty characteristics, workload, working conditions, and effect of institution type. Implications on the profession and suggestions for future studies were presented.

Research Data and Supplementary Material

No

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