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INTERGENERATIONAL RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS AT
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AN ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO FACULTY DEVELOPMENT

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INTERGENERATIONAL RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS AT RESEARCH-
ORIENTED LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES: AN ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO
FACULTY DEVELOPMENT
By

Melissa McDanielS

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Educational Administration

2008

ABSTRACT
INTERGENERATIONAL RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS AT RESEARCH-
ORIENTED LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES:
AN ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO FACULTY DEVELOPMENT
By
Melissa McDanieIS

The academic workplace in the 21St century is undergoing a period of dramatic
change, and it is within this context that faculty research collaborations have become
more ubiquitous. An increasing “generational divide” within the academic workforce is
in place, as large numbers of faculty hired in the late 19605 and early 19703 approach
retirement, and younger faculty are being hired to replace them.

The purpose of this study was to learn more about the experience of faculty who
have engaged in research collaborations with faculty of a different age, life stage, career
stage, or intellectual generation. The setting for this study was ten research-oriented
liberal arts colleges in the mid-Western, Northeastern, and mid-Atlantic regions of the
United States. A qualitative research methodology was used, and 26 faculty members
were interviewed over the course of two months. The central research question was:
What is the nature of intergenerational research collaborations as experienced by faculty
at research-oriented liberal arts colleges? Four additional questions helped build a more
complete picture of how faculty understood the nature of these partnerships:

1. What attributes of individual faculty members impact their experience of the
nature of intergenerational research collaborations?

2. What contextual factors impact faculty members’ experience of the nature of

intergenerational research collaborations?

 

3. What collaborative processes are a part of faculty members’ experiences of
the nature of intergenerational research collaborations?
4. What individual outcomes are a part of faculty members’ experiences Of the
nature of intergenerational research collaborations?
The results of this study found three categories of individual attributes, four
categories of contextual factors, four collaborative processes, and eight primary
individual outcomes for the more junior and more senior participants in this study. Four

key findings, as well as implications for research and practice, are presented.

Copyright by
MELISSA MCDANIELS
2008

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation would have never been possible without the participation Of the
26 faculty members who agreed to speak with me about their experiences as members of
research collaborations. I am grateful for their honesty, insight, and good humor.

The pursuit of a doctoral degree is a marathon, not a sprint. There are many
professional colleagues, friends, and family members I would like to thank for supporting
me on this five-year journey.

I want to thank members of my dissertation committee, Ann Austin, Roger
Baldwin, Kelly Millenbaugh, and Steve Weiland, for their guidance, support, and
confidence in my abilities. I want especially to acknowledge Ann Austin, my committee
chair. I am grateful for her guidance as I have developed as a scholar and teacher. She
embodies what it means to be a colleague within a community of scholars. She is a
friend and collaborator, and I look forward to our ongoing work together.

Thanks to three important women, Deborah DeZure, Mary Deane Sorcinelli, and
Donna Qualters. They have served as important mentors and friends to me during this
process. Their expertise in faculty and organizational development, and their professional
and personal guidance, are unsurpassed.

Due to financial support from the Michigan State University College of
Education, I had the good fortune of being able to pursue this degree as a full-time
student. A very special thank you to Suzanne Wilson for her three years of professional,
personal, and financial support. Thanks to Dean Carole Ames for the tremendous
resources she brings to the College to support doctoral students. I could not have asked

for a better environment within which to spend the past five years.

In fall 2003, I entered the Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education (HALE)
program with the “tweed cohort.” Your friendship, good humor, and intellectual
partnership are unmatched. A special thanks to John Brender, Jennifer Hodges, Denise
Newman, Mike Rishell, and Niki Rudolph for sharing laughter and hard work.

Thank you to my other friends in the HALE and other doctoral programs at
Michigan State — Debbie Chang, Stef Kendall, Sheryl Mauricio, Casey Ozaki, Jane
Pizzolato, and Scott Schopieray. Thanks to my friends from Boston and Washington,
DC. for being some of my biggest supporters over the last few decades. A special thank
you to Brent Bilodeau, Sue Christopherson, Jen Hayes, and Rebecca Klinger for helping
to keep me physically and spiritually balanced throughout this process.

A doctoral student’s family deserves special recognition. A very special thanks to
my parents, Garry and Annette McDaniels for their lifelong support, love, and confidence
in me. Thanks to Carol Measom for her love, and always keeping me in good humor and
providing the home base for seasonal fun. To Dan and Lori Renn for your love and
support. Thanks to the late Stewart Way for his wisdom and vision for a more peaceful
world. Finally, I want to thank my partner Kristen Renn for her love, support, patience,

and laughs throughout this long process.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................. xi
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................. xii
CHAPTER I — INTRODUCTION ............................................................. 1
Rationale ............................................................................... 1
Research Questions ...................................................................... 3
Conceptual Framework ............................................................. 4
Definition of Terms ...................................................................... 5
Research-Oriented Liberal Arts Colleges .................................. 5
Generation ...................................................................... 7
Faculty ...................................................................... 7
“Junior” and “Senior” .................................................... 7
Collaboration ...................................................................... 8
Research ...................................................................... 9
Method — An Overview ............................................................ 10
Study Limitations ..................................................................... 11
Summary of Chapter One ............................................................ 11
CHAPTER 11 —REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND CONCEPTUAL
FRAMEWORK ..................................................................... 12
Introduction .............................................................................. 12
Review of the Literature ............................................................ 12
Generations ..................................................................... 1 2
Collaborating ..................................................................... 14
Career Issues for Early, Mid-, and Senior Career Faculty ............... 24
Conceptual Framework ............................................................ 27
Ecological Systems Theory ................................................... 28
Life Course Theory ............................................................ 31
Summary of Chapter Two ............................................................ 33
CHAPTER III — METHOD ..................................................................... 34
Introduction .............................................................................. 34
Sampling .............................................................................. 35
Identifying Institutions ................................................... 35
Recruiting Faculty Participants .......................................... 36
Data Collection ..................................................................... 38
Introduction ..................................................................... 38
Interview ..................................................................... 38
Data Analysis .............................................................................. 39
Becoming Familiar with the Data .......................................... 40

vii

Organizing the Data ........................................................... 40

Coding and Interpretation .................................................. 40
Trustworthiness .................................................................... 42
Competent Practice ........................................................... 42
Ethical Considerations .................................................. 43
Summary of Chapter Three ........................................................... 43
CHAPTER FOUR — SAMPLE AND PARTICIPANTS ................................ 45
Sample ............................................................................. 45
Demographic and Academic Profile of Sample ....................... 46
Positionality of Participants .................................................. 49
Conclusion: The Sample .................................................. 53
Portraits of Participants ........................................................... 55
Summary of Chapter Four ........................................................... 78
CHAPTER FIVE —— FINDINGS ........................................................... 80
Introduction ............................................................................. 80
Individual Attributes .................................................................... 81
Generational Attributes .................................................. 82
Motivations of Individual Collaborators ................................ 93
Dispositions of Collaborators ......................................... 96
Concluding Remarks — Individual Attributes ...................... 100
Contextual Factors ................................................................... 1 01
Introduction ................................................................... 101
Heavy Undergraduate Involvement in Research ...................... 102
Issues of Critical Mass ................................................. 105
When Research Gets Done ................................................. 107
Perceptions of Others .......................................................... 110
Concluding Remarks — Contextual Factors ............................... 111
Collaborative Processes .......................................................... 113
How Did These Collaborations Begin? ............................... 113
Challenges ................................................................... l 19
Facilitating Factors .......................................................... 125
Roles and Division of Labor ................................................. 130
Concluding Remarks — Collaborative Processes ...................... 132
Individual Outcomes ................................................................... 133
Outcomes — Senior Members of Collaborations ...................... 133
Outcomes — Junior Members of Collaborations ...................... 140
Concluding Remarks — Individual Outcomes ...................... 146
Summary of Chapter Five .......................................................... 148
CHAPTER SIX — DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS ............................... 149
Introduction ............................................................................ 149
Study Rationale .......................................................... 149

viii

Research Questions .......................................................... 150

Method ................................................................... 151
Overview of Study Findings .......................................................... 152
Individual Attributes .......................................................... l 52
Contextual Factors .......................................................... 154
Collaborative Processes ................................................. 156
Individual Outcomes .......................................................... 158
Conceptual Framework .......................................................... 160
Individual Attributes .......................................................... 161
Contextual Factors .......................................................... 163
Collaborative Processes ................................................. 165
Individual Outcomes .......................................................... 166
Method — Alternative Methodological Approaches ............................... 169
Key Findings and Implications for Research ........................................ 170
Implicit Role of Generational Attributes in Faculty Collaborations ....17l
Intergenerational Research Collaborations and Mentoring ............. 172
Competition and Collaboration ........................................ 173
Salience of Research-Oriented Liberal Arts Context ...................... 174
Recommendations for Policy and Practice ........................................ 175
Deans of Faculty .......................................................... 176
Department Chairs and Senior Faculty ............................... 177
Junior Faculty and Prospective Faculty ............................... 178
Graduate Deans .......................................................... 178
Concluding Thoughts ................................................. 179
APPENDIX A ............................................................................ 180
Email to Provosts and Deans of Faculty
APPENDIX B ............................................................................ 181
Email to Faculty Members
APPENDIX C ............................................................................ 182
Informed Consent Form
APPENDIX D ............................................................................ 184
Participant Information Form
APPENDIX E ............................................................................ 186
Interview Protocol
APPENDIX F ............................................................................ 189
Figure 6.1 Bronfenbrenner’s Nested Contexts
APPENDIX G ............................................................................ 190

Participant Information, Number & Type of Collaborations. and Collaborator Information

ix

APPENDIX H ............................................................................ 199
The nature of intergenerational research collaborations: Individual attributes, contextual
factors, and collaborative processes relating to outcomes experienced by participants

REFERENCES ............................................................................ 200

Table 4.1

Table 4.2

Table 4.3

Table 4.4

Table 4.5

Table 4.6

Table 4.7

Table 4.8

Table 4.9

Table 4.10

Table 5.1

Table 6.1

Table 6.2

Table 6.3

Table 6.4

Table 6.5

Table 6.6

Table 6.7

Table 6.8

TABLES

College descriptive information (with participant affiliation) .............. 46
Participant demographic information & education background ............ 48
Generational positionality of participants ....................................... 49
Generational position of participants (revised) ................................. 50
Gender and ethnic make-up of junior & senior sub-samples ................ 50
Number of participants discussing 1, 2, 3, or 4 collaborations ............. 51
Disciplinary positionality by sub-sample ...................................... 52
Institutional positionality by sub-sample ....................................... 52
Cross tabulation Of institutional and disciplinary positionality. . . . ..........53
Participants and collaborative partners ............................. Appendix G
Pre-tenure sabbatical leave policies ........................................... 109

The nature of intergenerational research collaborations: individual
attributes, contextual factors, and collaborative processes relating to

outcomes experienced by participants .............................. Appendix H
Individual attributes: Central findings ........................................ 154
Contextual factors: Central findings ........................................... 156
Collaborative processes: Central findings .................................... 158
Individual outcomes (junior): Central findings ............................. 159
Individual outcomes (senior): Central findings ............................. 160
Benefits of being a mentor ...................................................... 167
Benefits of being mentored ..................................................... 167

xi

Figure 2.1
Figure 3.1
Figure 5.1

Figure 6.1

FIGURES

Bronfenbrenner’s nested environmental contexts ........................... 30
Framework for the presentation of findings .................................. 42
Framework for guiding discussion of findings .............................. 80

Ecological perspective on tension experienced by faculty. . Appendix F

xii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Rationale

The academic workplace in the early part of the 215t century is undergoing a
period of dramatic change. Schuster and Finkelstein (2006) point to “an unprecedented
restructuring that is changing the face even the meaning of higher learning” (p. 3).
lntemal and external pressures on colleges and universities are impacting the work-life of
faculty, considered the “heart” of any college or university. Although these changes are
not novel to postsecondary institutions in this country, the pace of change, as well as the
convergence of all of the dimensions of change (identified below) at once makes this
moment in the history of higher education particularly profound (Schuster & Finkelstein,
2006).

This changing environment is marked by five dimensions: (a) a changing
demographic profile of the professoriate (Gappa, Austin & Trice, 2006; Schuster &
Finkelstein, 2006); (b) increasingly sophisticated technologies for both research and
teaching (Austin & Baldwin, 1991; Baldwin & Austin, 1995; Chronicle of Higher
Education, 2005); (c) an increase in both the specialization and fragmentation of
knowledge (Austin & Baldwin, 1991; Baldwin & Austin, 1995; Duderstadt, 2000); (d)
the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of knowledge (Klein, 1996; Lattuca, 2001); and
(6) increasing demands for productivity and accountability (Rhodes, 2001; Sorcinelli,
Austin, Eddy, & Beach, 2006).

During this period of “permanent whitewater” (Vail, 1989), faculty are being
forced to embrace new attitudes towards their work and their institutions. Hall &

Associates (1996) described the task that needs to be conquered by professionals across

sectors: “For the individual the lack of security in the current environment means that
[the individual must] develop the ability to marshal outside resources such as
developmental relationships and stretching tasks. . .you must know how to assess
yourself, how to engage in self-inquiry and reflection, and how to ask for help in doing
so” (pp. 5-6).

Thus, not only do faculty need to engage in continuous learning, they also need to
be willing and able to engage in teaching, research, and service projects with other
colleagues. Recognizing these turbulent internal and external environmental pressures,
colleges and universities are reorganizing, and encouraging faculty to engage in
collaborative work (Kezar, 2005, 2006). Kezar (2006) identified three critical
“organizational features” (p. 811) that need to be altered (or created) to facilitate
collaboration. These features included: alignment of the collaboration with the mission of
the institution, creation of campus networks, and. the establishment of structures to
integrate the activities of collaborations across an institution._Both intra- and inter-
organizational collaborations are needed to make new scholarly discoveries, as well as
to improve student learning and institutional effectiveness.

In addition to the trend from individualized to collaborative research and teaching,
the generational make-up of faculty at colleges and universities is becoming more
diverse. Although age differences among faculty have always existed, the current
generation gap is even more pronounced as “a generational changing of the guard” (Rice.
Sorcinelli, & Austin, 2000) is occurring. The large cohort of faculty who were hired in

the 19605 and early 19705 are in the later stage of their academic careers, having to work

with a new group Of early career faculty who are entering a very different academic
workplace than these senior colleagues.

Findings from the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education
(COACHE) suggest that institutional support for collaborations among faculty of
different career ages may contribute to an institution’s ability to attract and retain early
career faculty (COACH, 2006). According to COACHE’S Director Kathy Trower, “Our
findings suggest that campuses can greatly increase the odds of attracting and retaining
top junior faculty by paying attention to climate in departments. . . [by asking questions
such as] Does everyone have access to important collaborations with senior colleagues?”
(COACHE, 2006). For junior faculty, having the chance to collaborate on scholarly
projects with senior colleagues may result in individuals feeling more connected to the
campus community, and therefore may result in faculty members’ choosing to stay at
institutions for longer portions of their careers. We also know from the literature on
faculty career development that more seasoned faculty can benefit from work with earlier
career colleagues (Baldwin, 1990; Baldwin & Chang, 2007). This generation gap,
combined with the increasing need for faculty research collaborations, emphasizes the
importance of understanding the opportunities and challenges of scholarly collaborations
between these groups.

Research Questions

Recognizing the potential impact that research collaborations can have on faculty
development and the growing “generational divide” in the academic workforce, this study
was created to answer the following research question: What is the nature of

intergenerational research collaborations, as experienced by faculty members at research-

oriented liberal arts colleges? Informed by ecological systems and life-span theories, I
sought answers to four additional questions to build a more complete picture of how
faculty understood the nature of these partnerships. Those questions included:
1. What attributes of individual faculty members’ impact their experience of the
nature of intergenerational research collaborations?
2. What contextual factors impact the faculty members’ experience of the nature
of intergenerational research collaborations?
3. What collaborative processes are a part of faculty members’ experiences of
the nature Of intergenerational research collaborations?
4. What individual outcomes are a part Of faculty members’ experiences Of the
nature of intergenerational research collaborations?
Conceptual Framework
The premise of this work rests heavily on the perspective that knowledge is
socially constructed (Vygotsky, 1978) through reciprocal interaction of a person and his
or her environment (Blumer, 1969). Often referred to as the socio-cultural or situated
perspective on learning and development, this lens provides a backdrop to ask questions
about how knowledge is produced within a community of practice (Lave & Wenger,
1991). Specifically, I made use of ecological systems theory (with roots in psychology)
and life-course theory (with roots in sociology) to frame the development of the
research question(s), study design, and interpretation of the data in this study.
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach to human development, informed the
formation of the four questions I posed to address the research question at the center of

this investigation (What is the nature Of intergenerational research collaborations, as

experienced by faculty participants at research-oriented liberal arts colleges?) This
conceptual model focused my attention on the characteristics of the individuals, the
environmental contexts within which these collaborations occurred, as well as the
processes that characterized the intergenerational research collaborations within which
the faculty were involved.

My examination of characteristics of the individual was informed, but not limited
by, Bronfenbrenner’s (1993; 1995) assertion that humans have a set of developmentally
instigative characteristics that serve to propel or restrain an individual’s development
over time. Bronfenbrenner’s concept of nested environmental contexts kept the situated
nature of each faculty member’s experience in the foreground of my analysis.

Later in his career, Bronfenbrenner, borrowed from lifespan theorist Glen Elder’s
(1995) concepts of historical and biographical time, and added a temporal dimension to
his ecological model (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). This temporal perspective on the ecology
of human development provided me with theoretical support to examine how
generational attributes of collaborating faculty, including chronological age, life stage,
career stage, and intellectual generation, impacted faculty members’ experiences of
collaborative relationships with their junior or senior colleagues.

Definition of Terms
Research-Oriented Liberal Arts Colleges
“...Loci where research, scholarship, and undergraduate education
meet, hothouses that contribute to, and synthesize, the explosive

intellectual elements of our time... ” (O'Shea, 2003)

This research was undertaken within research-oriented liberal arts colleges in the
upper-Midwest, Northeast, and mid—Atlantic regions of the United States. Sometimes
referred to as selective liberal arts colleges, these institutions are a small sub-group of
liberal arts colleges that are among the wealthiest private institutions in the country
(Schuman, 2005). In “The Distinctive College”, Burton Clark identified such colleges as
those “...that are highly regarded — socially defined as successful and effective” (Clark,
p. 5, 1970). These colleges are institutions in which faculty are required not only to be
strong teachers, but productive scholars in their disciplines (O’Shea, 2003). In 1992 there
was a meeting that brought together faculty whose professional identities and level of
scholarly output were more Similar to colleagues at research institutions than fellow
liberal arts college faculty (McCaughey, 1994). At this conference, these Select Liberal
Arts Colleges (SLAC) were defined as, “. . .a cluster of liberal arts colleges with faculties
actively engaged in their scholarly disciplines and with administrators actively expecting
and supportive of such engagement” (McCaughey, p. vii, 1994).

These institutions are responsible for producing a disproportionate number of
students who go on to earn their doctorates and move into faculty roles (Oakley, 2005).
Research-oriented liberal arts colleges compete with research institutions for the finest
faculty in the country (O’Shea, 2003), and expect their faculty to produce research like
peers at research institutions, and teach like peers at liberal arts colleges. The faculty at
these colleges are members of two different intellectual communities —— communities of
specialized colleagues outside of the institution, and communities across disciplines

within the colleges (Schuman, 2005).

Generation
In this study, I defined generation broadly to be inclusive of individuals that
shared similar chronological ages, life stages, career stages, or intellectual generations. I
provide theoretical support for this definition in the literature review (Chapter Three).
Faculty
The faculty who participated in this study were either tenure-track or tenured
faculty at research-oriented liberal arts colleges. Participants consisted of tenure stream
faculty of all career stages. All of the respondents who spoke of their experiences as
senior members of collaborations were at least tenured, associate professors at their
institutions when the collaborations began. Of the participants who spoke of their
experiences as junior members of collaborations, most (but not all) talked about their
eXperiences in collaborations that began when they were pre—tenure assistant professors.
In Chapter Four, characteristics of the sample and biographies of each respondent are
Presented.
‘Junior’ and ‘Senior'
In my presentation of the findings in this study, I use the words ‘junior’ and
‘ Seni or’ to refer to the relative generational positioning of faculty members in
CO 1 l aborations within which they were involved. I am not using ‘senior’ and ‘junior’ to
re fer to a specific chronological age, life stage, career age or intellectual generation of an
ind i\Iidual. Participants self-identified as ‘junior’ or ‘senior’ members of research
C01 1 aborations during the screening process for this study, and specified the dimension(s)

0 . . . . . . .
f generational difference that was salrent to them wrthm their partnerships. I use

modifications Of the phrases ‘junior/senior faculty’ and ‘faculty in ajunior/senior rOle’
interchangeably throughout this manuscript.
Collaboration

General definitions of collaboration, and more specifically faculty collaboration,
are ubiquitous, especially in the organizational studies, creativity, higher education, and
research policy literatures. Wood and Gray’s (1991) definition of collaboration is used
frequently as a conceptual basis for exploring the dynamics of different collaborative
processes among faculty members. According to Wood and Gray (1991): “Collaboration
occurs when a group of autonomous stakeholders of a problem domain engage in an
interactive process, using shared rules, norms, and structures, to act or decide on issues
related to that domain” (Wood & Gray, 1991, p. 146). Austin & Baldwin (1991) used this
definition in their monograph on faculty research and teaching collaborations, as well as
in their 1995 grounded theoretical study on long-term research collaborations. Kezar
(2005, 2006) made use of this definition in her theoretical and empirical work on intra-
and inter-organizational collaborations in higher education.

John-Steiner (2000) asserts that collaborations are characterized by two or more
partners involved in the co-construction of knowledge, and that these “generative ideas
emerge from joint thinking, from significant conversations, and from sustained, shared
struggles to achieve new insights by partners in thought” (p. 3). In 2004, Moran and
John-Steiner identified several characteristics of creative collaborations. They noted that
partners in collaborations are autonomous individuals with different perspectives, skills,
and resources. These differences drive and impact how collaborative projects unfold.

These researchers asserted that collaborations are interactions marked by the “fruitful

cultivation of tension” (p. 12) and are processes that can result in emergent or unexpected
outcomes.

These definitions, when considered jointly, share four core components:
(a) collaboration is at its core, a social/interactive process; (b) collaborators are
autonomous (yet interdependent) individuals; (c) collaborators bring different yet
complementary knowledge and skills to collaborative projects; and (d) the processes of
collaborations are emergent, and at best, result in new knowledge, a new decision or
action plan, or a new creative artifact. The faculty in this study were involved in a
collaboration that meets these four criteria.

Research

In this dissertation, the term ‘research’ will refer to any empirical or theoretical
projects in the physical sciences], natural sciencesz, humanities’, or social sciences4 that
fit Boyer’s definition of the scholarship of discovery, integration, application, or teaching
(Boyer, 1990). The scholarship of discovery refers to activity aimed at bringing new
knowledge into a field of study or examining existing knowledge in a new way. The
scholarship of integration refers to scholarly activity, such as interdisciplinary research,
where faculty bring differing strands of knowledge together to create new ways of
looking at scientific questions. The scholarship of application refers to scholarly activity
that aims to develop knowledge to solve current real-life problems. Finally, scholarship

of teaching refers to scholarship intended to provide formative feedback to faculty about

 

Physical sciences: chemistry, geology, environmental science, astronomy, physics, mathematics
Natural sciences: biology, botany, zoology, physiology
Humanities: languages, literature, philosophy

kWNr-n

Social Sciences: psychology, geography, history, economics

the efficacy of their teaching practice through examination of the learning outcomes of
students.
Method — An Overview

This study used an inductive, qualitative design to capture the essence of the
subjective experience of the respondents. This study was limited to an examination of the
experiences of individual faculty participating in intergenerational research
collaborations, not of intergenerational research collaborations themselves. However, the
nature of my recruitment strategy (requesting nominations from academic leaders)
naturally resulted in my receiving names of individuals who participated in the same
research collaboration at the same institution. 1 interacted with faculty participants as
individuals, and did not reveal the participation status of collaborative partnerss.
Academic leaders at research-oriented liberal arts colleges nominated faculty for
participation in this study. I visited ten colleges in three regions of the United States and
interviewed twenty-six participants. These visits occurred in the first several months of
the 2007-2008 academic year. In addition to interview data, I recorded observations in a
field notebook, and kept records of scholarly products given to me by the participants.
Interviews were transcribed and coded for emergent as well as pre-determined themes of
interest. Analysis was done in an iterative way, moving from data to interpretation and

back to the data as needed until I believed data were saturated.

 

5 Several faculty members asked me if I had or was going to talk to their research partner. When asked, I
reaffirmed that this study was designed to learn about their experiences as individuals, not to create a case
study about the collaborations within which they were involved. I also told members that confidentiality
requirements prevented me from letting them know who participated in the study.

10

Study Limitations

As social science research always involves ‘knowing’ that is partial, tentative and
context—specific (Glesne, 1999; Rossman & Rallis, 2003), the generalizability of the
results of this qualitative investigation are limited. More specifically, the purposive
sampling of the study method decreases the degree to which we can expect faculty in
other institutional types to experience these findings. However, the transferability of
these results to other research-oriented liberal arts institutions is possible. Another
limitation of this study was that some of the participants discussed only one collaboration
in-depth, while others discussed their experiences in more than one collaboration. This
led to an uneven depth in the data that I was able to gather.

Summary - Chapter One

In this chapter, I introduced the reader to the study rationale, research questions
and method. In addition, I provided definitions of important terms in the study, an
overview of the conceptual framework and noted some study limitations. In Chapter

Two, I will situate this study within existing literature.

11

CHAPTER TWO:
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE & CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Introduction

In this chapter I will review the literature that situates this project within a broader
intellectual context. I will first provide a short overview of the theoretical foundation for
the definition of generation that I used in this study. Second, I will review the literature
on faculty collaborations more generally, and scholarly collaborations in particular.
Third, I will describe what researchers know about issues facing faculty at different
career stages. Fourth, 1 will present two theoretical perspectives, ecological systems
theory and life course theory, that form the basis of the conceptual framework for this
study.

Review of Literature
Generations

A key concept embedded within this study was the concept of generations. Public
fascination with this term and what it represents is evident in the recent books and movies
that have been published and produced about generations of people that came of age
during WWII (“Greatest Generation”), in the turbulent years of the 19605 (“Baby Boom
Generation”), in the shadow of the Baby Boom (“Generation X”), and during the internet
revolution (“Generation Y” or “Millennials”). This public fascination with the idea of
generational cultures has resulted in a growing conversation about how differences
between the values and socialization experiences of these cultural groups manifest

themselves in the workplace (Muchnick, 1996; Orrell, 2007), and how differences in

12

these qualities impact intergenerational work environments (Zemke, Raines & F ilipzak,
2000)

Long before this interest in generations became “en vogue” within popular
culture, sociologists, psychologists and other scholars began theory building on the
subject. It is from these theoretical beginnings that I derived the definition of generation
that I used in this study to include individuals of a similar life stage, career stage, or
intellectual generation. Each of these terms can be more loosely- or tightly-coupled with
the concept of chronological age, another dimension I considered in my definition. In the
next several paragraphs 1 will explore links between these conceptions of generations and
their roots in the psychological and sociological literatures.

Erik Erikson (1950) and developmental psychologists that have come after him
were interested in the concept of life stage, and examining developmental trajectories and
transitions in peoples’ lives. Elder (1995) described the study of life stages and the
broader notion of life course as “. . . [placing] greater emphasis on the social pathways of
human lives, their sequence of events, transitions and social roles” (p. 103). McAdams
and de St. Aubin (1992) engaged in research focusing on the seventh stage of Erikson’s
model of human development — generativity. McAdams and de St. Aubin suggested that
generative action, acts of creating, maintaining, and offering, can be enacted by
individuals at any times of their lives, and not just during later life stages as Erikson
asserted. In the higher education literature, some of the earliest models of faculty career
stages (Baldwin & Blackburn, 1981) emerged from work on career development

(Levinson, 1978; Munley, 1977) that was built upon Erikson’s foundational work.

13

Baldwin & Blackburn (1981) identified five faculty career stages — assistant
professors (years 1-3), assistant professors (4 + years), associate professors (with tenure),
full professors (+5 years from retirement), and full professors (-5 five years from
retirement) -- in their study of faculty at liberal arts colleges in this country. Scholars
continue to engage in work that focuses on specific faculty career stages and the issues
most salient to faculty during those periods of work life. Scholarship in this area has
included studies of early career faculty (Austin, Sorcinelli, & McDaniels, 2007; Boice,
1991; Boice, 1992; Gibson, 1992; Rice, Austin, & Sorcinelli, 2000), mid-career faculty
(Baldwin, 2002; Baldwin & Chang, 2006) and senior faculty (Baldwin, 1990; Gappa,
Austin, & Trice, 2006; Leslie, 2006; Rice, Sorcinelli, & Austin, 2000).

Sociologists such as Eisenstadt (1956; 2003) and Ryder (1965) produced
foundational scholarship exploring the concepts of age group or age-cohort. Age-groups
and age-cohorts refer to groups of people that were born during a similar time period,
shared a particular socialization to society, adopted similar social norms, and experienced
shared historical events. I suggest that a metaphor can be drawn between these models
that are based upon birth cohorts, and groups of faculty who were: (a) ‘born into the
field’ at the same time; (b) socialized in similar ways into a discipline; (c) adopted social
norms of those disciplines; and (d) participated as full members of a discipline during the
heyday of specific scientific discoveries and paradigms. I used this modification of the
age-cohort concept to define intellectual generation in this study.

Collaborating
The literature that exists on collaborations — types, precursors, processes, and

outcomes — is broad and interdisciplinary. To fully understand the particular kind of

14

collaboration examined in this study — intergenerational research collaborations — it is
important to understand how this research fits into the broader empirical and theoretical
work on collaborative working relationships.

The literature informing this study came from studies that examined the
experiences of a variety of collaborators, including faculty (Baldwin & Austin, 1995),
scientists (Beaver, 2001; Katz & Martin, 1997; Kraut, Egido, Galegher, 1990; Presser,
1980), life partners (Creamer, 2001; Creamer & Associates, 2001), business managers
(Tjosvold & Tsao, 1989) and community liaisons (Waddock & Walsh, 1999). The
literature includes research on collaborators who worked together for shorter or longer
periods of time and within a variety of contexts, including academia (Amabile, Patterson,
Mueller, Wojicks, Odomirok. Marsh & Kramer, 2001; Sargent & Waters, 2004), for-
profit businesses (Powell, Koput, & Smith-Doerr, 1996), public agencies (Bryer, 2007),
and non-governmental organizations (Garrett, 2004; Roper, 2002).

A substantial base of literature focuses on research collaborations among
scientists, as well as on faculty in teaching or research collaborations. Therefore I focused
this review this body of work. However, I used some of the foundational theoretical work
on the general concept and processes of collaborations when gaps in the faculty
collaboration and research collaboration literature existed.

Reasons for Collaborating

Individual motives for being involved in collaborative activity often (but not
always) mirror the outcomes that these individuals may experience. Therefore, some of
the things that have been found to motivate individuals to engage in scholarly

collaborations are also, not surprisingly, outcomes that have been noted in the literature.

15

People get motivated to enter into research collaborations for a variety of reasons.
Many are motivated to enter a research partnership if they determine they will be able to
achieve a tangible scholarly outcome. Some of the tangible outcomes mentioned in the
literature (Fox & F aver, 1984) include: access to expertise, funding, knowledge, data,
skills and equipment; assistance in solving complex problems that otherwise could not be
solved; and very simply, increased scholarly output. In addition, factors that are more
social in nature also have played a role in individuals’ decisions to engage in research
with partners, rather than alone. Researchers enter research collaborations for a variety
of social reasons (Fox & Faver, 1984): (a) to have fun; (b) to connect personally with
others; (c) to achieve prestige or status; (d) to undertake what they see as a duty to assist
junior colleagues; (e) to associate with a person of a similar nationality or language
background; or (f) to fulfill a request of a third party.
Collaborative Processes

Within the higher education, organizational studies, creativity, and science policy
literature, one of the approaches that has been used to understand collaborative
relationships is a framework known more generally as a socio-historical or socio-cultural
approach (Cobb & Bowers, 1999; Sfard, 1998; Lave & Wenger, 1991). The guiding
metaphor of this perspective is that of participatory practice, with a focus on “interactive
systems that are composed of groups of individuals together with the material and
representational resources they use” (Cobb & Bowers, p. 5, 1999). Lattuca’s (2001) work
On interdisciplinary collaboration, Creamer’s (2001) work on research partnerships
between life partners, and John-Steiner’s (2000) work on creativity and creative

Collaborations are all heavily influenced by this perspective.

l6

Other theorists believe that collaborators negotiate and renegotiate how they
interact with each other over time. This perspective is at the core of negotiated order
theory (Gray, 1989; Baldwin & Austin, 1995), and helps scholars raise questions about
the social context in which this interaction occurs. According to this approach, each
negotiated order is flexible as participant roles, decision-making processes, and goals
evolve over time (Baldwin & Austin, 1995). In Baldwin & Austin’s (1995) grounded
research study of long-term research collaborations in higher education, they built upon
the notion of negotiated order and identified six dynamics upon which collaborators
interact and engage on joint projects. These dynamics included: degree of jointness,
definition of roles and responsibilities, flexibility Of roles, similarity of standards/
expectations, proximity of partners, and depth of relationship.

Developmental Stages

Several scholars have examined collaborations in higher education from a
developmental perspective. A developmental lens provides scholars with a way of
“describing and understanding the emergence, growth and dissolution of
collaborations” (Kezar, p. 834, 2005). Several scholars identified stages or phases that
collaborations go through over time. Some have identified the period in which
collaborations are ‘getting started’. This period of time has been referred to as
“formation” (Levine & Moreland, 2004), “initiation” (Hibbert & Huxham, 2005),
“problem/direction setting” (Gray, 1989), “commitment building” (Kezar, 2005),
“dialog/familiarity (Creamer, 2003), and “identifying and selecting potential

collaborators” and “negotiating terms” (Simonin, 1997).

17

Others have noted specific strategies that faculty utilize to start collaborations
with colleagues (Melin, 2000). In many cases, the collaborations get started after a series
of informal conversations between colleagues (Bozeman & Corley, 2004). Another
researcher found that collaborations evolved out of long-term friendships and networks
(Melin, 2000)

A large portion of this study focused on a close examination of the period of the
collaboration in which the partners are actively working towards the project goal(s). This
period of time has been referred to in the literature as “performance” (Levine &
Moreland, 2004), “engagement” (Hibbert & Huxham, 2005), implementation (Gray,
1989), commitment/sustaining (Kezar, 2005), collective consciousness/engaging
(Creamer, 2003), and “monitoring and managing an ongoing collaboration” (Simonin,
1997)

Finally, some researchers produced developmental models that identified a
separate stage of collaborating called dissolution (Levine & Moreland, 2004). All
collaborative projects, even ones lasting many years, eventually end. Levine and
Moreland (2004) put forth a number of causes for the dissolution of collaborations
(including member loss, conflict, opportunities elsewhere), and identified one reason for
dissolution that was particularly relevant to research collaborations: “[intellectual]
products may no longer be ‘marketable’ in the wider field. Examples include groups of
scientists who continue developing theories nobody else cares about” (p. 169). Simonin
(1997) suggested that it was important for participants to be intentional about exiting

collaborations in such a way that its original objectives were not compromised.

18

Differences in Academic Rank

Some of the past work on collaboration recognized the potential impact that
differences in rank (or other differences in structural representations of power
differences) can have on the processes and outcomes of collaborations for those involved.
Within the academic workplace a paradox exists. On the one hand, all faculty, regardless
of rank, are peers at the department level. Decisions get made through informal
interactions among a group of peers, “through collective action of the faculty as a whole”
(Clark, 1963), “. . .all working together in service to knowledge and truth...” (Gappa,
Austin, & Trice, p. 305, 2007).

However, as Clark notes . .the personal authority of the expert varies widely
often with rank and seniority” (p. 124). Thus the early career faculty involved in a
collaboration with senior colleagues will eventually be evaluated for tenure by these
senior colleagues (Sands, Parson, & Duane, 1991). The consequence of such exposure
has the potential to be beneficial or detrimental. On the one hand, competent, well
performing junior people can get their work seen by others and begin to build a positive
reputation with more senior colleagues. On the other hand, less competent early career
faculty run the risk of being labeled as such early in their careers, thus putting themselves
in jeopardy for tenure.

Research on collaboration in general, and faculty collaboration more specifically,
suggests some ways in which one’s rank, and the difference in rank among participants,
may impact one’s experience of a collaboration. Most of the challenges and opportunities

identified to date have been expressed as they apply to the junior person. Part of the goal

l9

of this study was to uncover what benefits and challenges intergenerational collaborations
provide to both the junior and more senior faculty involved in collaborative projects.

When discussing the role of rank differences in collaborations, several issues
become apparent. First, a junior person’s credibility in his or her field may be enhanced
as a result of his or her association with a senior scholar. It would take longer for the
early career person to achieve that credibility on his or her own (Baldwin & Austin,
1995). Second, for a early career faculty member, academic isolation may be alleviated,
especially benefiting “marginal populations” (Fox & Faver, 1984), including women and
people of color. Also, academic isolation has the potential to be alleviated for senior
faculty. For a senior person, their participation in an intergenerational research
collaboration may enable them to continue to produce scholarship despite administrative
responsibilities (Baldwin & Austin, 1995). A senior person may also benefit from Skills
of a junior person (Dickens & Sagaria, 1997) and experience some degree of career
revitalization as a result. Intergenerational relationships may also allow newer faculty to
get to know their senior colleagues better, and senior faculty to engage with their junior
colleagues (Quinlan & Akerlind, 2000).

Collaboration involving differences in rank can also pose challenges. Early career
and senior faculty have different publication needs. The literature has shown that
collaborating can sometimes slow down the production process (Rickson & Rickson,
1982; Stuth, Scifres, Hamilton, & Connor, 1991), just as it has been shown to help
individuals get publications produced more quickly. Second, a “gap” exists between what
type of scholarship is espoused as valued and what scholarship is rewarded on many

campuses. Early career faculty need to be concerned in most institutions about how they

20

will be evaluated as an individual, as opposed to (or in addition to) a member of a
collaborative team (Baldwin & Austin, 1995). Third, Baldwin and Austin (1995) found
the potential for the emergence of authorship credit battles, resulting in possible
exploitation of more junior people.

Outcomes for Individual Collaborators

In this study, I hoped to determine how participation in intergenerational research
collaboration impacts the early and senior career faculty involved. Below I summarize
what impact participation in collaborations has on individual collaborators, first laying
out some Of the positive outcomes that have been identified, then highlighting some of
the challenges.

Positive Outcomes. The body of research that exists on the impacts of
collaboration on individuals identifies benefits that are both Objective and subjective in
nature (Sargent & Waters, 2004). First, faculty collaborators believe that they became
more productive and efficient (Beaver, 2001; Creamer, 2004; Kraut, Egido, & Galegher,
1990; Sargent & Waters, 2004; Presser, 1980; Younglove-Webb, Gray, Abdalla, &
Thurow, 1999) as a result of collaborations. These studies suggested that collaborations
enabled participants to accomplish what would have otherwise been hard to accomplish
on their own. Second, in some studies to date, some faculty have noted that the quality
and accuracy of their work increased in research collaborations (Beaver, 2001; Creamer,
2004; Melin, 2000), as a result of multiple perspectives being brought to a scientific
problem. Third, faculty collaborators report that participating in collaborations increased
their recognition and visibility as scholars (Beaver, 2001; Bozeman & Corley, 2004;

Creamer, 2001; Katz & Martin, 1997; Melin, 2000). Fourth, many of the studies found

21

that faculty participating in research collaborations learned something new, acquired new
knowledge or advanced their thinking in some way about a topic of interest. Some faculty
learned the social and interpersonal skills needed to participate in science and/or
collaborations (Bozeman & Corley, 2004; Katz & Martin, 1997), by learning about each
other and each other’s interests through social discourse and exchange of ideas (Melin,
2000). Other faculty acquired new content or technical expertise (Bozeman & Corley,
2004; Creamer, 2004; Katz & Martin, 1997; Quinlan & Akerlind, 2000; Sargent &
Waters, 2004). Fifth, collaborators mentioned the social and networking benefits of
collaboration. Researchers noted how participating in collaborations gave faculty access
to broader networks of colleagues (Bozeman & Corley, 2004; Creamer, 2001; Katz &
Martin, 1997, Melin, 2000), allowing them to participate in the “invisible college”
(DeSolla Price & Beaver, 1966) of scientific work. These relationships provided
“intellectual companionship” (Katz & Martin, 1997) and reduced isolation that they may
have otherwise experienced (Fox & Faver, 1984). Finally, studies have illuminated the
personal impact that these collaborations have had on participants who reported they had
fun, experienced deeper relationships with colleagues, and got much pleasure out of the
work (Bozeman & Corley, 2004; Kraut, Egido, Galegher, 1990; Melin, 2000). Junior
colleagues deepened their understanding of their professional identities, values, strengths,
weaknesses and needs (Kram, 1983).

Negative Outcomes. Despite the possible positive impact of increased visibility
that comes with collaborating, an early career partner risks becoming an invisible part of
the team (Beaver, 2001). This psychosocial phenomenon, named the “Matthew Effect”,

was coined by Merton, and “consists of the accruing of greater increments of recognition

22

for particular scientific contributions to scientists of considerable repute and the
withholding of such recognition from scientists who have not yet made their mark”
(Merton, p. 446, 1968). In other research, faculty (rank not specified) identified a
negative emotional impact of the collaborative experience —— they felt much guilt about
their lack of productivity, and contribution to the team effort (Younglove-Webb, et. al.,
1999). Other negative impacts that have been reported include increased administration
(Katz & Martin, 1997), added time due to logistics and coordination (Katz & Martin,
1997), and increased funds needed to facilitate visits and communication (Katz & Martin,
1997).

Sargent and Waters (2004) suggested that an individual faculty member might be
impacted differently (as a result of participating in a collaboration), depending upon the
faculty member’s career stage. In this study, I needed to consider that the impact of
faculty participation in collaborations could have both positive and negative outcomes,
even within the context of an otherwise “successful” collaboration.

Collaborations among Mentors and .Protégés

Mentor-protege associations are, by definition, relationships. However, not all
mentor-protege relationships involve collaboration on scholarly endeavors, and not all
collaborations between people of different generations involve mentoring. Much of the
research on mentor-protege relationships has not examined the processes and outcomes
of the two parties working together as research collaborators. This distinction is an
important one and often confused in the literature examining relationships between junior
and senior colleagues. One exception to this lack of clarity is John-Steiner’s (2000) work

on collaboration across the generations. She noted that a “critical form of collaboration

23

occurs when participants of different ages are linked by the desire to bridge time and join
their talents” (p. 151).

For over two decades, scholars in management and education have studied
various aspects of mentoring practice. A mentoring collaboration typically involves a
mentor and a prote’gé who are engaged in a “dynamic reciprocal relationship in a work
environment between an advanced career incumbent and a beginner ...aimed at
promoting the career development of both” (Healy & Welcher, 1990). In this study, the
primary goal of the collaboration will be completion of a scientific project, rather than
“optimizing career development” (Healy & Welcher, p. 17, 1990) of the early career
and/or senior person. Thus career development was in the background, and scholarly
development and achievement were foregrounded in this study.

Career Issues for Early, Mid-Career and Senior Faculty

In this section, I will provide an overview of what is known about the issues —
aspirations, opportunities and challenges - faced by early career, mid-career and senior
faculty. I will then discuss how this knowledge will inform the current study.

Early Career Faculty

In studies over the past decade, data have suggested that early career faculty are
interested in collaborating with senior colleagues. Some studies have demonstrated that
early career faculty are very interested in and hope for opportunities to work in
departments and institutions with collegial cultures (Boice, 1992; Fink, 1984; Menges,
1999; Rice, Sorcinelli, & Austin, 2000; Sorcinelli, 1988; Tierney & Bensimon, 1996;
Trower, 2005; Whitt, 1991). Scientific collaborations, such as the collaborations

examined in this study, are just one type of many cultural artifacts that may exist in

24

departments that exist to promote collegial relationships among faculty (Austin,
Sorcinelli, & McDaniels, 2007). Several studies have also found that early career faculty
are more likely to remain in their academic positions if there are involved in productive
and enjoyable relationships with colleagues. (Luce & Murray, 1998; Trotman & Brown,
2005; Trower, 2005).

Data from the 2006 Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education
(COACHE) study highlight how early career faculty are expressing interest in working
on scholarly projects with senior colleagues, and being intellectually challenged and
engaged within their institutional communities (Austin, Sorcinelli, & McDaniels, 2007).
Thus intra-organizational collaboration (the focus of this study) might be a way to satisfy
these relational interests of new faculty, and to promote engagement (and hopefully
retention) of these talented individuals at institutions of higher learning.

Research has shown that despite these aspirations, there are challenges that early
career faculty face that might get in the way of collaboration with senior faculty. One of
the challenges that early career faculty generally struggle with is time. A significant part
of an early career faculty member’s adjustment to his or her faculty position is managing
the academic workload, as well as personal responsibilities. Some studies suggest that
engaging in collaborative scholarly work will actually reduce the time pressure faculty
experience, as such engagement can help individuals get scholarly work ‘out the door’ at
a faster pace than they could otherwise do alone. But much research suggests that these
time pressures take away from the time faculty have to establish collegial relationships

with each other (Olsen, 1993; Olsen & Sorcinelli, 1992; Solem & Foote 2004).

25

In addition to time pressures, perceptions that early career faculty have of their
senior colleagues can get in the way of the proliferation of scholarly research
collaborations. Many institutions across the country, especially liberal arts colleges, are
increasing demands on faculty to maintain an active research agenda (Austin, Sorcinelli,
& McDaniels, 2007; Beaver, 2001; Robinson, Hartley, Dunn, 2001). Early career faculty
worry that senior faculty who got tenure under different expectations may not be as
knowledgeable about the newer research areas, and therefore have a harder time judging
their portfolios fairly. These worries may be a cause for distance from more senior
colleagues (Austin, Sorcinelli, McDaniels, 2007).

Mid-Career Faculty

Mid-career faculty include tenured faculty beyond the ill-defined period of time
right after the probationary period of their careers (Baldwin & Chang, 2006). According
to Baldwin (2002), these faculty are experienced professionals who are “ripe for broader
engagement” within and external to their departments and institutions. These faculty are
in the years of their academic careers during which individuals tend to become more
concerned about issues of generativity (Erikson, 1950; McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992;
Baldwin, 2002) and “relationship, communion and community” (Baldwin, p. 7, 2002).
These individuals also sometimes find themselves plateauing, being at a crossroads of
their research and or teaching, potentially finding it difficult to vie for research support
(Baldwin & Chang, 2006). As the number of mid- to late career faculty increases,
Baldwin (1990) suggested that institutions need be concerned about faculty vitality and
rejuvenation. Towards such ends, institutions like the University of Wisconsin

established an award for faculty who are within “five to twenty years past their first

26

promotion to a tenured position” to “provide[s] funding for research support and lend[s]
encouragement to faculty at a critical stage in their careers” (University of Wisconsin,
2006). In sum, the primary concerns of faculty at mid-career include staying current in
their fields, succeeding in getting promoted (to full professor), and staying engaged in
their work (Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2007).
Senior Faculty

The number of senior faculty is increasing dramatically as individuals who were
hired in the late 19605 and early 19705 are moving towards retirement (Leslie, 2006;
Rice, Sorcinelli, & Austin, 2000). In the eyes of some, “. . .worry is spreading that an
aging professoriate will not be able to provide state-of-the-art teaching and research
necessary for the United States to remain competitive” (Baldwin, p. 160, 1990).
However, research has demonstrated that senior faculty also want to stay abreast of
current developments in their fields, maintain enthusiasm for their work, get support for
their teaching within the context of changing technologies and students, and receive help
in planning for their transitions out of full-time work and into retirement (Gappa, Austin,
& Trice, 2007). An increasing number of colleges and universities are starting phased
retirement programs (Leslie, 2006) for this group, and some progressive colleges and
universities are developing programs whereby the senior (or emeritus) faculty can still
contribute his or her knowledge and skills to the college community (Leslie, 2006) by
mentoring junior faculty (Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2007).

Conceptual Framework
In the paragraphs that follow, I will describe two closely related theoretical

frameworks that I used to both design this study and interpret the findings. These

27

frameworks are ecological systems theory and life course theory. Since the mid-19705,
ecological and life course approaches to human development have become increasingly
used together to try to explain “how dynamic worlds change people and how people
select and construct their environments” (Elder, p. 102, 1995). According to Elder
(1995), life course theory brought a temporal dimension to ecological perspectives on
growth and development, and ecology theory encouraged a developmental perspective
when looking at the issues of trajectories and transitions — those issues of most interest to
life course theorists.
Ecological Systems Theory

The foundational theorist that transferred biological ideas of ecology to a social
systems approach to development was Urie Bronfenbrenner (Bronfenbrenner, 1976a
1976b; 1979; 1992; 1993; 1995). Bronfenbrenner’s (1992) process-person-context-time
(PPCT) is driven by the assumption that development is the result of reciprocal
interaction between a person and his environment over time. Details about this model are
provided in the next several paragraphs.
Process

Bronfenbrenner developed his model from Lewin’s (1935) theoretical approach to
accounting for individual behavior that suggested a person’s behavior was a joint
function of qualities of the person and qualities of his or her environment.
Bronfenbrenner modified Lewin’s model to suggest that human development is a joint
function of person and environment. I designed this study, in part, to more fully
understand the reciprocal nature of the collaborative processes between more junior and

more senior faculty members.

28

Person

Bronfenbrenner identified a set Of personality characteristics or dispositions that
he suggested serve to either propel, or disturb, an individual’s developmental trajectory
over time. Another way of explaining this perspective is that each individual has a set of
developmentally instigative characteristics that are “especially favorable or unfavorable”
(Bronfenbrenner, 1992) to his or her development, depending upon the environmental
context he or she encounters. Those dispositions most relevant for understanding the
experiences of faculty participants in this study included those qualities that: (a) either
welcomed or repelled reactions from an individual’s environment, resulting in either
developmental progress or stagnation; (b) enable a person to structure (and re-structure)
one’s own physical and social environment; or (c) enable a person to conceptualize their
experience vis-a-vis their environment.
Context

Another central assumption of ecological approaches to human development is
that individuals develop in a context of nested structures, ranging from more proximal
face-to-face settings to more distal settings not including the person. In this study, each
participant was viewed as embedded in a set of nested personal and professional contexts,
and these contexts, I will argue, impacted their experience of the research collaborations
in which they are involved. These contexts include microsystems, mesosystems,
exosystems, and macrosystems (see Figure 2.1 for a visual representation of these nested

contexts).

29

 

¢ macrosystem

\ \ exosystem
\ mesosystem
‘ l

‘

} microsystem

    
 
 

 

 

  

developing
person

Figure 2.1: Bronfenbrenner’s nested contexts

Over the next few paragraphs I will describe these systems starting with the one
most proximal to the person (microsystem) and ending with the system that is most distal
to the person (macrosystem).

Microsystems are proximal setting(s) in which individuals engage in day-tO-day
activities with others. These settings are social spaces within which an individual
assumes roles (e. g. researcher, teacher, spouse, parent) that are relevant to those settings
(laboratory, classroom, family) within which the social interactions are taking place. A
fundamental assumption behind this work is that research collaborations are just one of
many microsystems of which each faculty collaborator is a part. According to
Bronfenbrenner, each individual exists within the context of one mesosystem, which he

refers to as a “set of interrelations between two or more settings [microsystems] in which

30

the developing person becomes an active participant” (Bronfenbrenner, p. 209, 1979).
Next, an exosystem does not contain the person, but rather includes those institutions or
social structures that influence a person’s learning and development (Bronfenbrenner,
1979). As was described in detail earlier in this literature review, research collaborations
exist within the context of norms, policies, and cultures of institutions and disciplines.
Finally, a person’s macrosystem is the most distal part of his or her environment, and
refers to belief systems or ideology that penetrate all of the nested contexts
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The macrosystem includes those norms and mores of political,
educational, cultural and social structures of society. Any exploration of how faculty
experience research collaborations will be enhanced by taking into consideration the
dominant paradigms, techniques, and ethical norms of the time.
Time

The final dimension of Bronfenbrenner’s PPCT model is time. It was not until
later in Bronfenbrenner’s career that he examined more closely the temporal dimension
of the ecology of human development. This examination was driven by his introduction
to life course theory, an overview of which is provided next.

Life Course Theory

Lifespan theorists, like Alwin (1995), recognize that “the set of sociohistorical
events experienced by individuals” (p. 226) represent a key factor in their development
and “each generation experiences life differently” (p. 227). Elder (1985), one of the
founding life course scholars argued, “the impact of the historical event on the life course

of a cohort reflects the stage at which the change was experienced” (p. 25).

31

Elder (1985) also points out that differences in biographical time or life stage can
“give us insight into adaptive resources, options, and meanings that become potential
elements in linking social change to life outcomes” (p. 25). In this project, I suggest that
biographical time can be applied to the time period in the history of a person, department,
institution or discipline.

The construct ofgenerativity, as conceived by McAdams and de St. Aubin (1992)
also plays a role in framing this study. Although Erikson (1950) originally associated
generativity only with one stage in the adult life cycle, McAdams and de St. Aubin
(1992) suggest that generativity is a psychosocial feature that can be enacted during any
adult life stage. I suspect that generativity may play a role in the reasons why early and
senior career faculty chose to collaborate in the liberal arts colleges being investigated
here.

As Baldwin (1990) found, faculty who are beyond the early stage of their careers
are interested in both leaving some legacy in a field or discipline, as well as being needed
by their professional colleagues (prior to their departure from the field). For the purposes
of this study, I suspect that this inner desire (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992) may play
some role in why senior faculty may begin to participate in research collaborations with
their early career colleagues. In addition, both early and senior career faculty may
experience an institutional, disciplinary or field (science)-wide cultural demand to engage
in scholarship that both contributes to the development of future knowledge as well as to
the long term interests of the colleges in which they work and Of the students with whom
they teach. Finally, I would suggest that McAdams and de St. Aubin’s (1992) notion of

generative action — acts of “creating, maintaining, and Offering” — may very well be

32

relevant and useful to describe collaborative behavior and processes experienced by the
participants in this study.
Summary of Chapter Two
In this chapter, I reviewed the existing literature on generations, collaboration,
and career stages of faculty. I also described two theoretical perspectives that drove the
decision, implementation, and analysis of the study — ecological systems theory and life
course theory. In Chapter Three, 1 will describe the method used to undertake this study

in great detail.

33

CHAPTER THREE: METHOD
Introduction

This study was a qualitative exploration into the nature of intergenerational
research collaborations as experienced by faculty at research-oriented liberal arts
colleges. I designed the study to be consistent with the assumptions of a social
constructivist paradigm, including the notions that “reality is subjective and multiple”
(Creswell, p. 17, 2007), and that answers to research questions are derived from the
complexity of views of the participants, leading to answers that are rich and contextual
(C reswell, 2007). The primary method I used in this study was face-to-face interviewing.
However, as “. . .interviewing provides a necessary, if not always completely sufficient,
avenue of inquiry” (Seidman. p. 4, 1991), I augmented the interviews with observational
data that I collected during campus visits, as well as with information contained in the
professional records (e.g., vitae, web sites) Of participants.

I was a “key instrument” (Creswell, 2007) in this study. I propelled this study
forward by establishing connections and building rapport with academic leaders and
faculty at participating institutions. My ability to build relationships enhanced my
effectiveness at gathering data for this project, as “. . .interviewing is both a research
methodology and a social relationship that must be nurtured, sustained, and then ended
gracefully” (Seidman, p. 72, 1991). I served as both an “outsider” and “insider” in this
research project (Bartunek & Louis, 1991). On the one hand, I am neither an alumna nor
a current or former faculty/staff member at a liberal arts college. However, I do have
twelve years of experience working in institutions of higher education, developing

curricula and programs for arts & sciences faculty and undergraduate students.

34

Sampling

The sampling strategy I utilized in this study was primarily purposive (Miles &
Huberman, 1994). However, since I wanted to take advantage of the geographic
proximity of one college, and the contacts that a colleague from the east coast had at
another college, my sampling procedure was also, but to a lesser degree, opportunistic
(Miles & Huberman, 1994). I needed to decide upon which research-oriented liberal arts
colleges to target, and then develop a strategy for recruiting faculty at these institutions.

Identifying Institutions

1 first identified a group of potential institutions from which I could recruit faculty
participants for this study. I identified an initial sample of research-liberal arts colleges by
identifying institutions that produced a large number of undergraduates who go on to earn
doctoral degrees. The National Science Foundation collects this data in their survey,
“Baccalaureate Origins of Doctoral Recipients” (National Science Foundation, 1996).
Eight of the ten institutions in my final sample were colleges on this list.

After developing an initial list of prospective institutions, I spoke with a colleague
who had connections to provosts and deans of faculty at some of the liberal arts colleges I
identified. This colleague provided me with the names of five provosts/deans of faculty
he knew personally, and encouraged me to use his name contacting them. Another
colleague provided me with the names of provosts/deans of faculty at two research-
oriented liberal arts colleges in the geographic region where she was located. Finally, in
three cases, I identified the academic leaders from institution web pages, and contacted

them directly.

35

These institutions (referred to as Colleges A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J in this
study) are among the wealthiest undergraduate institutions in the nation. The colleges
were located in three geographic regions of the United States: the upper-Midwest
(Colleges A, B, and C), the northeast (Colleges D, E, F, and G), and the mid-Atlantic
(Colleges H, I, and J).

Recruiting Faculty Participants

In early July 2007, I e-mailed (Appendix A) each of the provosts/academic deans
to request names of faculty members on their campuses who were, or had been, involved
in intergenerational research collaborations. Upon receiving lists of faculty from each
provost via email, direct phone conversations, or conversations with their staff members,
I had developed a list offifty-threefaculty prospects.

I contacted each of the nominated faculty over email (Appendix B) to determine if
they were interested in learning more about the study, and were willing to have a ten-
minute telephone conversation with me about the project. The goals for these telephone
conversations were:

1. To determine if a prospective participant met the study criterion;
2. To answer any questions faculty might have about the study; and
3. To arrange a time for an interview (if the faculty member was eligible to
participate and interested in doing so).
To be eligible to participate, each faculty member needed:
1. An earned doctorate in his or her discipline;

2. Status as a tenured or tenure-track faculty member at his or her institution;

36

3. To be (or have been) involved in a research collaboration with a faculty

member:

*

of a different tenure status and different chronological age; or

*

of similar tenure status and different chronological age; or

*-

of different tenure status and similar chronological age; and/or

*

the product of a different era of graduate education and, trained under
different paradigms, with different paradigmatic assumptions and scientific
advances.

I also requested that each participant had been collaborating with his or her
partner for at least one year. Finally, to be considered eligible for the study, the
collaborative partner of each prospective participant could be located: (a) at the same
research-oriented liberal arts college; (b) at the same research-oriented liberal arts
college, yet moved during the collaboration to another institution; or (c) at another
college, university, research institute or corporation.

Of the fifty-three initial contacts given to me by the provosts and academic deans,
twenty-six faculty met the criterion I set forth, and expressed a willingness to participate
in the study. Half of these faculty identified themselves as having interest in talking about
their role as senior partners in research collaborations, and another half identified
themselves as having interest in speaking about their experiences as junior members of
collaborations. A sample size of twenty-six is consistent with a qualitative, exploratory
research project seeking to capture “a deeper understanding of participants lived

experiences” (Rossman & Rallis, 1998).

37

During the screening calls, once I knew the faculty member was both eligible and
interested in the study, I gathered additional educational and professional information on
each faculty member. I ended each phone call by scheduling a date for me to come for an
interview on the faculty member’s campus. Prior to visiting each campus, I sent each
faculty member (electronically) both an informed consent form (Appendix C) and a
personal information form (Appendix D) for their review and completion.

Data Collection
Introduction

During fall 2007, I traveled to ten research-oriented liberal arts colleges in the
upper-Midwest, northeast, and mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The sources of
data in this study were: the participants themselves (screening interview, campus
interview), documents related to participant participation in his or her intergenerational
research collaborations (vitae, public web information, scholarly products), and my own
ethnographic observations about each campus.

I carried a field notebook on each visit to provide me with a place to record
mostly descriptive (Glesne, 1999) information about the campus environment, my own
reactions to the campus, the students and the faculty I met with. I also used this field
notebook to remind myself of any follow-up that needed to be done with a participant.
My visits to these institutions were completed by October 15, 2007.

The Interview

At the beginning of each interview, I asked the participant if he or she had any

questions about the consent form, or the personal information form (Appendix E) I had

sent them previously. After the faculty member signed the inform consent forrrr

38

(Appendix F), and asked me any questions about the study, the interview began and
lasted anywhere from 60-90 minutes. Each interview contained a series of semi-
structured and open-ended (Merriam, 1998) interview questions (Appendix G). With the
participant’s permission, I digitally recorded each interview.

During the last few minutes of each interview, in an attempt to maximize the
richness of participants’ responses, I asked each participant if they could think of any
metaphors that communicated their experience working in an intergenerational research
collaboration. Recognizing that not all people express themselves most effectively
through speech, I gave them the option of communicating these metaphors to me through
visual representations (drawings). Patton (1981) articulated the value of this method for
eliciting images and metaphors from participants in research studies, and encouraged the
use of creative approaches to evaluation because “no single modality of communication
and experience is effective with everyone” (p. 217). Eight of the twenty-six participants
attempted this exercise and described their drawings to me. The verbal descriptions the
participants provided of their drawings were also audio recorded and were coded along
with the rest of the interview data.

Data Analysis

I analyzed the data in an ongoing and iterative way, keeping my questions and
conceptual framework in mind, shifting from close analysis of the data to larger
conceptual issues throughout the data analysis process. My analytic strategy included the
following steps (Rossman & Rallis, 2003), each of which I implemented multiple times

during the data analysis process. I: (a) familiarized myself with the data; (b) organized

39

the data; and (c) coded and interpreted the data (generated several a priori categories;
allowed categories and themes to emerge from the responses Of the participants).
Becoming Familiar with the Data

After each campus visit, I had the audiotapes transcribed. Upon receipt of each
transcript from the transcription service (escriptionist.com), I listened to each interview
while reading through each transcript. I was able to remind myself of the content and
general tone of the interviews, as well as check the accuracy of the transcripts. It was
during this process that I identified several topics that permeated each interview: the
salience of intergenerational differences, the impact Of the liberal arts context on an
individual’s experience of a research collaboration. and interpersonal processes that
occurred during research collaborations these faculty experienced.

Organizing the Data

Prior to coding the data on a line-by-line basis, I spent a significant amount of
time making decisions about how to organize the data — how to put it in a form that
would be easy to analyze and code, and come back to as frequently as I needed during the
analysis period. Once I confirmed the accuracy Of the transcripts, I uploaded the files to a
data management program (Hyper Research). Although the capacities of this program far
exceeded my use, the program provided a platform for me to create codes, highlight
representations of these codes in the data, and print reports of the codes in a variety of
different formats.

Coding and Interpretation
I approached analysis of the data in a rigorous and scholarly way to capture both

the complexity (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996) and common themes among the participants. I

40

examined the transcripts with an Open mind, yet did not think that I was entering into data
analysis with a ‘clean slate’ (Seidman, 1991). I engaged in a combination of open and
selective coding (Strauss & Corbin, 1990), to identify themes related to my research
questions, while being flexible enough to allow unexpected themes to emerge.

I began the data analysis by coding the text with a set of a-priori categories that I,
as the researcher, was interested in (e. g., answers related to the central research question
as well as questions asked in the interview protocol), as well as with themes I noted in my
first review of the interview transcripts. I also engaged in a detailed line-by-line analysis
of the interview transcripts to generate categories that were indigenous (Rossman
&Rallis, 2003) to the participants in this study.

After an initial round of coding and analysis, I recognized that the research
question I posed when I proposed the study in April of 2007 was beginning to evolve.
When I proposed this study, I posed. two primary research questions:

1. “What is the experience of both junior and senior faculty who participate

in intergenerational research collaborations?”; and

2. “What impact did participation have on the individuals involved?”

As I began to analyze the data and other seemingly important elements emerged, these
questions evolved into a broader research question:
What is the nature of intergenerational research collaborations, as experienced by
faculty at research-oriented liberal arts colleges?
This evolution represents an expansion in my thinking, as I recognized that themes
including individual attributes, contextual factors, collaborative processes, and individual

outcomes were shared by participants, and represented ideas that were broader than the

41

initial set of research questions. Figure 3.1 presents a diagram of a framework that will
scaffold my presentation of the study findings (in Chapter Five) as they relate to the

revised research question.

 

Individual
Attributes

I

Col laborativeL Individual
Processes

Contextual
Factors

Figure 3.1 Framework for presentation of findings

 

 

Outcomes

 

 

 

Trustworthiness

Two standards of trustworthiness (Rossman & Rallis, 2003) were used in this
study: ( l) The study was completed in such a way that upheld standards of “competent
practice” (p. 63); (2) The study was completed with close attention to ethical standards.

Competent Practice

According to Rossman & Rallis (2003), a study upholds standards of competent
practice if the study is credible, rigorous, and potentially useful. I tried to ensure the
credibility of this study by paying particular attention to the interview transcripts
themselves, examining how a sentence, phrase or paragraph I claimed as part of a theme
or code was situated in the context of what participants were talking about before, and

after the particular moment of interest. By discussing how I was Situated in the study

42

(earlier in this chapter), and having peers read drafts of my writing, I was also trying to
reinforce the credibility of the study. The methodology of this study was sufficiently
rigorous and I worked to keep the process transparent, and to triangulate as many sources
of data as possible. AS I suggest in Chapter Six, the findings are potentially useful to
deans of faculty, department chairs, senior and junior faculty, as well as graduate deans
who are responsible for preparing the faculty of the future.

Ethical Considerations

The primary ethical consideration in this study was confidentiality. Although I
was interviewing twenty-six individuals about their experiences in research partnerships,
and not examining the processes between individual collaborators, some of the
individuals I interviewed happened to be members of the same research collaboration. 1
treated these participants as I did other participants without collaborators in this study; I
promised confidentiality to all. I fI was asked whether or not I was interviewing
someone’s collaborative partner, I said that as per confidentiality arrangements, I could
not answer that question, and re-emphasized that my unit of analysis was the experience
of individuals, not collaborations themselves.

To protect against breeches in confidentiality, I removed participant names from
this document, replacing the names with pseudonyms chosen either by the participants or
myself. Disciplines, institutional affiliations, and potentially identifying scholarly
information will not appear in any publications based upon this study.

Summary of Chapter Three
In this chapter, I described the sampling, data collection, and data

analysis/interpretation processes. I completed my discussion of the method by describing

43

indicators of trustworthiness that I used in all aspects of study implementation and
analysis. In Chapter Four, I will provide both an overview of the composition of the

sample in this study, as well as biographies on each faculty participant.

44

CHAPTER FOUR — SAMPLE AND PARTICIPANTS

Before introducing the findings of this project (in Chapter Five), I want to
introduce the study sample, providing the reader with an overview of characteristics of
the sample as a whole, as well as a biographical overview Of each participant.

First, I will provide the reader with an overview of the research-oriented liberal
arts college faculty who participated in this study. This overview contains information on
the size of the sample, the gender and ethnic composition of the faculty group, the
academic backgrounds of participants, the generational positions of participants, and the
types of collaborations (marked by disciplinary differences/similarities, institutional
differences/similarities, and generational differences/ similarities) these participants were
involved in. After providing this overview, I will introduce each participant, describing
demographic, academic, professional and personal information that will provide a context
for understanding how the faculty respondents experienced the nature of the
intergenerational research collaborations in which they were involved.

Sample

Twenty-six faculty members from 10 research-oriented liberal arts colleges
agreed to participate in this study. Fourteen of the participants came from three colleges
in the upper mid-West, while 12 participants came from seven colleges in the
Northeastern and mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. A full list of institutions,

participants, locations/settings, and mission-oriented details can be found in Table 4.1.

45

Table 4.1 College descriptive information (with participant affiliation)

 

College Participants Location Setting Mission

 

College A ' Anachem Midwest Rural Church-affiliated
Andrew
Doolittle
Ellen
Saleem
Tim

 

Cassandra Midwest Urban
Gary
Hank
Julia
Larry
Mambi
Tiffany

College B

 

College C Wanda Midwest Rural

 

College D Elisa Northeast Rural
Hannah

Sevren

 

College E Clara Northeast Rural

 

College F Callithrix Northeast Suburban Women’s college

Soren son

 

College G Ruby Northeast Rural Women’s college

 

Doc Mid-Atlantic Suburban
Spike

College H

 

Barry Mid-Atlantic Suburban
Parker

College I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

College I Gareth Mid-Atlantic Suburban Women’s college

 

Demographic and Academic Profile of Sample

Of the 26 participants, 15 were men and 1 1 were women. Twenty-three
participants identified as Caucasian, two participants identified as African American, and
one participant identified as Indian (see Table 4.2 for demographic information). The
faculty ranged in age from 28 to 67. Eleven of the 26 participants attended liberal arts
colleges as undergraduates. Of the 11 participants that went to liberal arts colleges as
undergraduates, eight of them attended research-oriented liberal arts colleges. Five
participants attended Ivy League universities, while 6 participants attended public
research universities in the US, and 2 attended elite research universities overseas.

Lastly, two participants in the sample attended private U.S.-based research universities

46

for their undergraduate degrees. Over half (1 7) of the participants earned their doctorates
at public research universities in the US. Four attended Ivy League institutions. Three
attended elite private research universities in this country, and one attended an elite
university in Western Europe. One faculty member attended a private Catholic research

university in the US. See Table 4.2 for educational background of participants.

47

Table 4.2

Participant demographic information and educational background

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Faculty Gender Ethnicity Undergraduate Ph.D.
African- . . . . .
Anachem male . private liberal arts public research univerSIty
American
Andrew male Caucasian private liberal arts public research university
. elite rivate research
Barry male CaucaSIan Ivy League . p .
univerSIty
. . . research-oriented liberal
Callithrix female Caucasran arts Ivy League
Cassandra female Caucasian public research university public research university
Clara female Caucasian Ivy League public research university
. research-oriented liberal
Doc male Caucasran Ivy League
arts
. . research-oriented liberal private catholic research
Doolittle male CaucaSian . .
arts univerSIty
Elisa female Caucasian public research university public research university
Ellen female Caucasian public research university public research university
. elite rivate research
Gareth male CaucaSIan Ivy League . p .
univerSity
Gary male Caucasian private liberal arts public research university
. rivate research . . .
Hank male Caucasran p . . public research univerSIty
univerSIty
Hannah female Caucasian public research university public research university
. . elite rivate research
.Iulia female CaucaSIan . p . Ivy League
umversrty
. research-oriented liberal . . .
Larry male Caucasran arts public research university
. . research-oriented liberal . . .
Mambi female CaucaSIan arts public research univerSIty
. elite research universi
Parker male CaucaSIan Ivy League . . ty
(international)
. research-oriented liberal . . .
Ruby female Caucasran arts public research univerSIty
' African- ublic research universi . . .
Saleem female . p. . ty public research university
American (international)
. . ublic research . . .
Sevren male Indian (resrdent) p . . . . public research univerSIty
UniverSity (international)
Sorenson male Caucasian Ivy League public research university
. . research-oriented liberal
Spike male Caucasran arts Ivy League
. . research-oriented liberal . . .
Tiffany female Caucasran arts public research univerSIty
Tim male Caucasian public research university public research university
. . . . elite rivate research
Wanda female Caucasran public research univerSIty . p .
univerSIty

 

48

 

Generational Position

Positional ity of Faculty Participants

In this study, I define a generation as a group of people who share the same

chronological age, life stage, career stage, and/or intellectual generation. Of the 26

participants, 13 spoke from a junior generational position, 12 spoke from a more senior

generational position, and one (Sorenson) spoke of his experience in two collaborations,

one of which he was the more junior colleague, and one in which he was the more senior

 

 

colleague.
Table 4.3 Generational positionality
Junior (13) Senior (12) Both (1)
' Anachem ' Barry ° Sorenson
° Andrew ° Callithrix
° Cassandra ° Doolittle
' Clara ' Elisa
0 Doc ° Ellen
0 Hannah ° Gareth
' Julia ° Gary
0 Mambi ° Hank
° Ruby ° Larry
° Saleem ' Parker
0 Spike ' Sevren
0 Tiffany ' Wanda
' Tim

 

 

 

 

Therefore, in circumstances during which I describe experiences Of participants

holding junior or senior roles, I will include Sorenson’s responses in each group of

results.

49

 

Table 4.4 Generational positionality (revised)

 

Junior

Senior

 

Anachem
Andrew
Cassandra
Clara
Doc
Hannah
Julia
Mambi
Ruby
Saleem
Sorenson
Spike
Tiffany
Tim

 

Barry
Callithrix

Doolittle

Elisa
Ellen
Gareth
Gary
Hank
Larry
Parker
Sevren

Wanda

 

Sorenson

 

Of the 14 participants that shared their experience as a junior partner, seven were

men, and seven were women. In terms of ethnicity, two were African American and

twelve were Caucasian. Of the 13 participants that shared their experiences as a senior

partner, nine were men and four were women. In terms Of ethnicity, one senior

participant was Indian, and 12 identified as Caucasian.

 

 

 

 

Table 4.5 Gender and ethnic make-up of junior and senior sub-samples
Junior Senior
Gender 7 male 9 male
7 female 4 female
Ethnicity 2 African American 12 Caucasian
12 Caucasian 1 Indian

 

 

 

Over the course of interviewing the 26 participants, faculty respondents shared

stories about 40 intergenerational research collaborations they were (or had been) a part

of. It is obvious therefore that some of the 26 participants talked about their experiences

in more than one collaboration.

50

 

 

Of the 26 participants, 15 talked about one collaboration (15), nine spoke of two
collaborations (18), one spoke of three collaborations (3), and one faculty member talked

about four (4) intergenerational research collaborations within which he had been

 

 

 

 

 

 

involved.
Table 4.6 Number of participants discussing 1, 2, 3, or 4 collaborations
Number of Collaborations By # of Participants Number of
Discussed Collaborations
Informing this Study
1 15 15
2 9 18
3 l 3
4 1. 4
26 40

 

 

 

 

 

Some might interpret this imbalance as meaning the perspectives of a few
participants disproportionately contributed to the results I report in Chapter Five.
However, I do not believe any participants were disproportionately represented in this
study because the participants that talked about more collaborations did not necessarily
take more “airtime” than other participants in this study. For example, Larry discussed
four collaborations within our 68-minute interview, while Tiffany talked about only one
collaboration in our 87-minute interview. However, this lack of a one-to-one
(mathematical) relationship between the number of collaborations discussed and the time
spent in our interview together does suggest that I may have received more in depth
responses from the participants that talked about their experiences in one relationship (vs.
participants that talked about their experience in multiple intergenerational research

collaborations). This is a limitation of this study that was mentioned in Chapter One.

51

Disciplinary & Institutional Positionality

Of the 26 participants, nine were from physical science disciplines, two from
humanities disciplines, seven from natural science disciplines, and eight from social
science disciplines. Of the 40 collaborations that participants described, 10 were inter-
disciplinary and 30 were intra—disciplinary collaborations. Of the 19 collaborations
discussed by faculty that had more junior roles, four were inter-disciplinary and 15 were
intra-disciplinary. Of the 21 collaborations discussed by faculty with more senior roles,
six were inter-disciplinary and 15 were intra-disciplinary.

Table 4.7 Disciplinary positionality by sub-sample

 

 

 

 

Junior Senior Total
Intra-disciplinary 15 15 30
Inter-disciplinary 4 6 10
Total 1 9 2 1 40

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of the 40 collaborations participants described, 24 were intra-institutional and 16
were inter-institutional. Of the 19 collaborations discussed by faculty with more junior
roles, nine were intra-institutional and 10 were inter-institutional. Of the 21
collaborations discussed by faculty with more senior roles, 15 were intra-institutional and
six were inter-institutional.

Table 4.8 Institutional positionality by sub-sample

 

 

 

 

Junior Senior Total
Intra-institutional 9 1 5 24
Inter-institutional 1 0 6 16
Total 19 2 1 40

 

 

 

 

 

 

52

Of the 40 collaborations mentioned, 14 were intra-disciplinary and intra-
institutional, 16 were intra-disciplinary and inter-institutional, ten were inter-disciplinary
and intra-institutional, and zero were inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional.

Table 4.9 Institutional x disciplinary positionality

 

 

 

 

Intra-disciplinary Inter-disciplinary Total
Intra-institutional 1 4 10 24
I nter-institutional 16 0 16
Total 30 1 0 40

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion: The Sample

Although this was a qualitative study and I therefore had no expectation of
generalizable results, I did hope to have a sample that could be characterized as diverse
across several dimensions. The 26 participants in this study were faculty representing ten
research-oriented liberal arts colleges in three geographic regions of the United States
(upper—Midwest, Northeast, mid-Atlantic). Second, there was more disciplinary diversity
than I expected to be able to recruit. In my sample of 26 participants, 16 were scientists,
and 10 were either social scientists or humanities scholars. There were only slightly more
men in this study (15) than women (11). Of the faculty talking about experiences they
had as a junior member of a partnership, six were men and seven were women. This
balance between men and women holding more junior roles is not surprising given the
changing demographics resulting in more women in tenure and tenure-track positions in

academe (Leslie, 2006).

53

However, my sample was homogeneous in some other important ways. First,
of the 12 faculty that spoke of their experience as senior members of a collaboration,
eight were men and only four were women. The imbalance of men and women among the
faculty speaking as senior members of collaborations is not a surprise, given the
imbalance of male and female faculty hired in the late 19605 and early 19705. The gender
imbalance among my more senior participants was compounded by the fact that 16 of the
26 of the participants in this study were in STEM fields where women are traditionally
underrepresented.

In terms of ethnicity, this is also a very homogeneous sample. All but three of my
participants were Caucasian. Of the remaining participants, two identified as African
American and one identified as Indian. Finally, in terms of educational background, these
participants are educational elites. Of the 26 individuals I spoke to, over half (15) held
bachelors degrees from research-oriented liberal arts colleges, Ivy League institutions, or
elite universities in other countries. Participants earned their doctorates from a slightly
more diverse array of institutions, including public research universities (17), Ivy League
institutions (4), elite private colleges in the US. (3), an elite private college in Western
Europe (1) and a private Catholic research institution (1).

Finally, a very interesting fact, although not necessarily surprising given the
institutional type (liberal arts) where these faculty work, was the finding that not one of
the collaborations discussed by the participants was both inter-disciplinary and inter-
institutional (see the cross-tabulation in Figure 4.9).

Now that I have provided the reader with a “birds eye view” of the sample, I will

now present biographies of each Of the 26 participants.

54

Portraits of Participants

Each participant summary contains the following information: (a) demographic
characteristics; (b) educational history; (c) institutional and disciplinary affiliations; (d)
personal (non-work life) information; (e) the number and type of collaborations each
participant talked about during the interview; and (t) characteristics of the participants’
collaborators (to the extent this information was shared). Table 4.10 (Appendix G)
provides an overview of the number of collaborations each participant discussed, along
with information (as available) on each participant’s collaborative partner.

Anachem

Anachem is a 38-year Old African American male, and a recently tenured
Associate Professor in a physical science discipline at College A, a church-related liberal
arts college in the Midwest. He arrived at College A, and began his first tenure—track
position in 2002. Anachem received tenure in 2006. He attended an evangelical liberal
arts college as an undergraduate. He worked in industry as a scientist for a year, before he
returned to a research institution in the southern US. to complete his doctorate. Anachem
said that he always knew that he wanted a faculty position at a liberal arts college.

Anachem told me about his experience as a junior member of two collaborations.
He spent most of his time discussing the interdisciplinary collaboration he had with
Doolittle, a professor and chair of a natural science department at College A. Doolittle
asked Anachem to join an interdisciplinary team he was leading shortly after Anachem
arrived at the college. The collaboration has been a wonderful experience for Anachem.

He spoke extensively Of how much he enjoyed collaborating with colleagues that were

55

more senior than him, and were located in different disciplines. He expressed his love of
learning, and felt that senior colleagues were more open to collaborating than his peers.
Andrew

Andrew is a 33-year Old Caucasian male and an Assistant Professor in a
humanities department at a church-affiliated liberal arts college (College A) in a small
town in the Midwest. He began his work at the college in Fall 2005. Andrew received his
PhD. in May 2006 from a public research university, and attended a church-affiliated
liberal arts college for both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Andrew told me about a two-year collaboration with a senior colleague located
within his department that resides in a different specialty unit from Andrew. Andrew’s
senior colleague, an Associate Professor, is the creator of a digital textbook, aimed at
improving how college students learn the broader disciplinary area in which they both
teach. Andrew’s collaborator asked him to join the team to develop a new unit for
students interested in learning the sub-disciplinary area in which he (Andrew) specializes.

Andrew’s colleague has been at the college for 15 years, and Andrew estimated
that his collaborator is in his mid- to late-forties. The collaborator is married with
children that are about ten years older than his own. Andrew calls his collaborator a kind
Of “kindred spirit”. He also spoke quite eloquently about how his collaborator is a bit of
an academic “maverick”, and this had made him think more about what kind of faculty
member he wants to be. Andrew, like many faculty, experiences stress about his
workload (teaching, scholarship, community service) and family Obligations. He is

married with one young child.

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Barry

Barry is a Caucasian male, and professor of a physical sciences discipline at
College I, a suburban institution on the East Coast. Barry’s first year as a tenure-track
professor was in 1979 at an Ivy League institution in a nearby state. In 1986 he accepted
an Associate Professor position at College I and was promoted to Professor in 1992. He
earned his doctorate and master’s degrees at an elite, private institution on the west coast,
and his undergraduate degree at an Ivy League university.

Over the course of our conversation, Barry talked about two collaborations that he
had been involved with, each of which started during a sabbatical he took in the mid-
19905. Barry spent a year at one of the world’s most prestigious scientific research
institutes. Barry talked about how he was one of the oldest visiting researchers at the
institute that year (he was 50), and one of the few experimental scientists among many
theorists. The two colleagues that he collaborated with (on separate projects) were both in
their late 205 or early 305. This first collaborator, a young man from Korea, was
interested in working with Barry to test out some of his theoretical ideas on real data.
Barry was comfortable working with those younger than him and was pleased that the
junior scientist did not treat him with any great deference. This aforementioned
collaboration went on to last approximately two years.

During that same sabbatical year, Barry began collaborating with a post-doctoral
fellow at a nearby Ivy League institution. This collaboration ended up lasting for over 10
years. As Barry remembers it, the junior partner was interested in whether or not Barry
had the data that could help him detect the scientific effect he was interested in.

According to Barry, “. . .he seemed very interested in learning about analyzing the data

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from me.” The work that resulted from Barry’s collaboration with his junior colleague
(who went on to take a position at a research institute in Canada and then a faculty
position in the UK.) “. . .was arguably the most important work I’ve ever done.” Barry is
a very self-effacing man. During our conversation, he engaged in much reflection about
whether or not he had a successful career, reflecting on the value of his scholarship.
Callithrix

Callithrix is a Caucasian female that holds an endowed professorship in a natural
science department at a women‘s college on the East Coast (College F). Callithrix has
held her position at the College for over 20 years. Callithrix earned her doctorate at an
Ivy League university, and her undergraduate degree at a research-oriented liberal arts
college on the West Coast. Callithrix used our conversation to speak about a
collaboration with a recently tenured, Associate Professor that had a joint appointment
with the natural sciences department in which Callithrix was housed, and a social science
department on the same campus. Callithrix was program director of the interdisciplinary
academic program between the two departments at the time the collaboration began, and
was involved in hiring this junior colleague. Callithrix saw it as her responsibility to help
this person get started at the College, especially given that her junior colleague held a
faculty position that straddled two departments. To this end, Callithrix added her name, at
the request of the junior colleague, to an NSF grant, to enhance the legitimacy of the
grant application. Callithrix emphasized that the partnership was very much led by the
junior colleague — in both symbolic and practical ways. They always met in the junior
colleague’s office, and Callithrix undertook tasks the junior colleague asked her to do.

Callithrix experienced this collaboration as satisfying as well as challenging, as she

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needed to learn to think using an epistemological perspective with which she was not
familiar.
Cassandra

Cassandra is a 53-year Old Caucasian female who is a faculty member in a social
science department in College B. Appointed to a tenure-track position in 1986, Cassandra
now holds the titles of Professor and Chair. She is the only tenured (and tenure-track)
faculty member in her department. She has three other colleagues that are part-time, non-
tenure-track faculty members. Cassandra has been at the institution since 1986. She
received her doctorate and undergraduate degrees from the flagship public university in
the same state.

Cassandra described an almost 20-year long teaching and research collaboration
with Gary, a senior colleague in another social science department at College B. This
collaboration resulted in a book published in 2006. Her collaborator has recently become
a Professor Emeritus at the College.

Cassandra’s office was pristine — her books were smoothly aligned on her shelves.
The Office was well lit and filled with flourishing plants. She experiences herself as
someone that thinks differently from the “traditional” academic.

Clara

Clara is a 36-year-old Caucasian female Assistant Professor of natural sciences at
a rural college (College E) on the East Coast. She came to this college as an Assistant
Professor in Fall 2005. This job at College E was her first faculty job. She earned her

Ph.D. at a public research university in New England, and her undergraduate degree at an

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Ivy League university. In addition to her experience in academe, Clara has 5-years of
work experience as a scientist in not-for-profit research institutes.

Clara discussed an ongoing collaboration with a male colleague who is
approximately 10-15 years older than she. She told me that this colleague is definitely of
a different intellectual generation than she. Since their work together began, Clara’s
collaborator has been located first at a research university, then at another research-
oriented liberal arts college in her geographic area. At both institutions, Clara’s
collaborator was a director of a research institute, but not in a tenure track position.

Clara started working with her senior colleague on an environmental project when
he and his institute were located at the public research institution. The two became aware
of each other through a student, who asked Clara’s future collaborator to be on her (the
student’s) thesis committee. At the time of our interview, Clara was married and due to
have a child within the next six months.

Doc

Doc is a 48-year old male, and an Associate Professor of a physical science
discipline at “College H” on the East Coast. Doc received his Ph.D. from an Ivy League
university, and his bachelor’s at a research-oriented liberal arts college. For seven years
after getting his doctorate, he was a senior research fellow at an internationally
recognized research institute. During this time, Doc also taught classes at his
undergraduate alma mater. In 1994, he was hired as an Assistant Professor at College H.
In 2000 he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure. He will be applying for
promotion to Professor in the near future. Doc is an experimentalist (vs. theorist) in his

field.

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Doc shared his experiences in three collaborations in which he was in the junior
position. Although he has been in his field for 20 years, there are three physicists that he
relies upon as his “voices of experience” on different topics. Two of the three
collaborators that he considers friends have been “instrumental in [his] development”.
The third collaborator, with whom he hasn’t gotten as personally close, has provided Doc
with access to scientific networks that he would not otherwise had access to.

The first collaboration Doc described is with a colleague at a public research
university in a neighboring state. This colleague is, in Doc’s words, “at least ten years
older than me and very established and very well-funded and heavily published”. The
two men met through a shared dissertation advisor. He considers this colleague a “voice
of experience” on theory in his field. This senior colleague is also very connected to
another sub-disciplinary community in his field. They have had several NSF grants
together. According to Doc, this collaborator is quite famous; an award winner.

Second, Doc talked about his work with a research scientist at a company funded
by the federal government. Doc considers this man his “voice of experience” in his sub-
discipline, and very well connected to what is “happening in the community”. Doc told
me about how this collaborator sees his work with Doc at College H as an opportunity to
play with ideas he cannot at the company he works for.

Finally, Doc spoke about a “more formal” collaboration with a scientist at an
federally funded research center at a public research university in the Midwest. He says
that this scientist and his center provide another connection to a sub-disciplinary

community in his field. Doc was approached to be a part of this federal grant because of

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his (Doc’s) links to undergraduate education and “the very youngest members of our
community”.
Doolittle

Doolittle is a 58-year Old Caucasian male who is a faculty member in a natural
science department in College A. He has the titles of Professor and Chair. Doolittle
started his career at a regional institution in the Midwest in 1988. In 2001 , he came to
College A as Professor. He received his undergraduate degree from College A, and his
doctorate from a private Catholic research university in the Midwest.

Over the course of our conversation, Doolittle chose to speak about his
intergenerational collaboration with Saleem, a pre-tenure Assistant Professor in his
department. When his partner Saleem (also a participant in this study) was hired as
Assistant Professor in 2001, Doolittle asked her to join a team applying for an
interdisciplinary federal grant. He said he likes Saleem, but felt that she had not gotten
articles out quickly as he would have liked. This project is the anchor for his research
activity at this time in his career, and not surprisingly, he is very invested in the outcome.

Elisa

Elisa is 58-year Old Caucasian woman that holds an endowed professorship in a
natural science field at a rural college on the east coast. She was hired as Assistant
Professor in 1979 and was granted tenure in 1985. She earned her doctorate at a large
research university in the Midwest. In the late 19805, she was Acting Dean of Students at
the college. Elisa received her undergraduate degree from the same research university

from which she received her doctorate.

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Elisa discussed two collaborations within which she was the senior partner. The
first collaboration, with a male Assistant Professor in a physical science discipline,
resulted in a scientific breakthrough that was recognized by the scientific community
(published in Nature) and the general media (Guinness Book of World Records; National
Public Radio). Unfortunately, Elisa’s junior collaborator did not get tenure, and has since
left the institution for another research-oriented liberal arts college.

Elisa talked about another collaboration with a female Assistant Professor at
another elite, research-oriented liberal arts college in the Midwest (and not a college in
this study). Her collaboration with this individual (who also had a specialty in the natural
science discipline within which Elisa resides) began after she (junior collaborator)
professor did not get tenure at Elisa’s institution. Prior to starting the research
collaboration, Elisa coached her colleague about political and pedagogical issues.

Ellen

Ellen is a 57-year old Caucasian woman who is a Professor in a humanities
department at College A. She has held her position at College A since the late 19805.
Prior to coming to this college, she taught at two other institutions in the Northwestern
US. for two-and-a-half years. She received both her undergraduate and doctoral degrees
from public research institutions. During our interview, Ellen talked about a collaboration
she initiated with an Assistant Professor in a social sciences department at College A.
Ellen asked him to collaborate on writing a book for which she had the content and
contextual expertise, and he had methodological expertise. In the middle of their work
together, a prestigious public research institution hired her partner. Ellen remarked how

she found it funny that she reached out to a younger colleague hoping to be helpful to

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him — and he really did not need her help! Ellen has thought more than the average
scholar about issues of intergenerational relationships. She published a book on faculty
mentoring and has given talks on the subject nationally.

Gareth

Gareth is a 61 year-Old Caucasian male who holds an endowed chair in a
department of natural science at an all women’s college on the East Coast (College J). He
came to his institution in 1986 as Professor and Department Chair. For 12 years prior to
arriving at the college, he served as assistant then Associate Professor at an elite private
research institution in the Midwest. He received his graduate degrees at a prestigious
private research institution on the west coast, with postdoctoral fellowships at other
prestigious universities. He received his undergraduate degree from an Ivy League
university.

Gareth discussed his experiences in two collaborations during our interview. First,
he discussed his work 15 years ago with an Assistant Professor (10 years younger than
him) in his department. This collaboration resulted in some papers that were, in Gareth’s
words, “not well received”. By “not well received”, he said they were not accepted into
research journals, but he (Gareth) made sure they found their way to “print” in the form
of review articles. At the time of our interview, Gareth said that he and that collaborator
(who is still at the institution and a Professor) had started to discuss trying to work on
those papers again.

He discussed a second collaboration with a social scientist, computer scientist and
humanities professor at his institution. He described two of these collaborators as 15

years and 20 years younger than him, respectively. The third collaborator, a humanities

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professor, is approximately his age. Together they wrote a scholarly paper on teaching.
This paper emerged from an experience they had running a workshop for teachers. Gareth
expects papers to continue to emerge from that project.

Although Gareth did tell me about intergenerational collaborations he was or had
been involved in with other faculty, it was obvious to me that the collaborations with
students may have had a bigger impact on him. In particular, he shared that his most
salient intergenerational research collaboration was with a student shortly after he arrived
at his institution in 1986. In his words, this collaboration “fundamentally changed the
kind of research” he went on to do. Gareth also liked talking about intergenerational
relationships he had with “dead people” (a phrase used by a colleague of Gareth’s). He
talked about the powerful role that Erwin Schrodinger, William James, and Descartes
have had on his thinking.

Gary

Gary is a 72-year-old Professor Emeritus of Political Science at his institution
(College B). He is retired and finished a four-year phased retirement in 2005. Gary was
very kind to take the time to meet me at the university for our conversation. Gary began
his career at this liberal arts college in 1965. Prior to joining the faculty at College B, he
served in a tenure-track position at a public research university on the West Coast. He
received his doctorate from a public research institution, and attended a liberal arts
college as an undergraduate. The focus of our conversation was Gary’s 20-year long
collaboration with Cassandra, another participant in this study. In particular, he focused

on his experience writing a book with Cassandra that was published in 2006. Although he

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is now an Emeritus Professor, he was Professor when their working relationship began 20
years ago. He was in a four-year phased retirement when their work on the book began.
Hank

Hank is a 54-year-old professor in a natural science department, and former
provost at College B. Hank received his doctoral degree from a public institution in the
Midwest. He has been a faculty member at his college since 1984. Prior to coming to
College B, he was Assistant Professor at an elite public university in the southern US. for
four years.

Like other participants in this study, he remarked that a lot of his collaborative
work is with students. His intergenerational collaborations with faculty are mostly with
individuals at his own institution. Over the course of our conversation, he shared his
experiences with two collaborations— both with pre-tenure women - one in his
department, one in another department (in a physical science discipline). The collaborator
in the other department is Tiffany, another participant in this study.

As former Provost, Hank brought a broader perspective on how his institution
supports early career faculty. He shared information about different programs and
Centers that have been established to support the needs of early career faculty at College
B.

Hannah

Hannah is a 33-year old Assistant Professor ofa social sciences discipline in
College D, and has held her position at the institution since Fall 2006. Of all my
participants, she was the faculty member that had been in her faculty role for the least

amount of time. However, she came to her institution fully ready to enact an aggressive

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research agenda. One of the primary reasons Hannah came to College D was the
generous start-up package she was offered that would allow her to have her own
laboratory. Having her own lab was a priority for Hannah when she was considering job
offers. Prior to coming to the College, Hannah spent four years as a postdoctoral
researcher at a research institution. Many publications resulted from her postdoctoral
research. She received her bachelor’s, masters and doctoral degrees from the same
research institution.

Hannah talked to me about two intergenerational collaborations in which she has
been involved. First, she told me about the ongoing collaboration she has with a
researcher from her postdoctoral period. Her collaborator is a man that is approximately
25 years her senior and very established in the field. Her collaborator attended College D
as an undergraduate; he was very happy that she took the job. Hannah was in charge of a
very large empirical study as a postdoctoral researcher in her collaborator’s lab. She is
now a co-PI on the same study. In her first year at College D, she and her collaborator
wrote seven papers together. She said that she would be able to devote more time to
working with him once she got her own laboratory up and running.

Hannah talked about another collaboration with a senior clinical professor (in a
different subfield) at an Ivy League institution (where Hannah is now an affiliate). This
collaborator is more than 20 years older than Hannah. Hannah first met her collaborator
in her doctoral program when the woman hired her to code videotapes for a different
project. They re-initiated their working relationship when two mentors that they share
were nearing retirement and developed health problems. This, according to Hannah,

made her methodological input and empirical data even more important for her senior

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collaborator to have access to. Hannah has young children and a husband that stays at
home.
Julia

Julia is a 40-year-old Caucasian female who recently was promoted to Associate
Professor with tenure at College B, an urban college in the Midwest. She was initially
hired as Visiting Assistant Professor in 1999, and was then hired as Assistant Professor
on the tenure track in 2001. Julia attended an elite private college on the east coast as an
undergraduate, and attended an Ivy League institution for her doctoral work.

Julia talked about a collaboration she had with a man in her department who is
now Professor Emeritus. The College hired her knowing that her collaborator was
entering into a phased retirement period. He received his doctorate the sarrre year that she
was born. They collaborated together in the years leading up to his retirement. The main
project she talked about was updating a reader in her discipline that her collaborator and
an eminent methodologist (now deceased) wrote years ago.

Julia is married with children. Along with a colleague (a peer) in another
department, she is writing a book about highly educated women who decide to leave the
workforce to stay home with their children. Over the course of our discussion, Julia
shared that she has considered this option for herself.

Larry

Larry is a 67-year old faculty member in a social science unit of College B. He
has the titles of Professor and Chair. Larry attended College B as an undergraduate and
earned his doctorate at the public research institution in the state. Larry accepted an

Assistant Professor position at College B in 1969.

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Larry is well regarded in the education community of his social science discipline.
He has worked closely with Educational Testing Service (ETS) in developing Advanced
Placement (AP) exams for his discipline. Over the course of our conversation, Larry told
me about four collaborations with junior faculty in his department. One of these
collaborations resulted in a reader he produced with Mambi (another participant in this
study). Larry also collaborated with a female Assistant Professor on a community
redevelopment project. He found her ability to use a specific computer program
invaluable to him on this project. Finally, he brought in two additional junior faculty to
work with him on a Mellon Foundation funded environmental restoration project he
started with a senior colleague in a natural science department at the institution.

Mambi

Mambi is a 42-year-old Associate Professor in a social science department at his
institution. He came to the College in 2002 after one-year at a lesser-known institution
(comprehensive university) in the Midwest. He was granted tenure in 2007. Mambi
received his doctorate at a southern public institution, and two master’s degrees from a
public research institution in the Midwest. He also brings 10 years of experience in
international development work to his faculty role.

Mambi chose to talk about an intergenerational collaboration he was involved in
that resulted in the publication of an edited book targeted at both introductory college
level courses in his discipline, as well as to Advanced Placement classes in high schools.
His primary collaborator on this project is Larry, another participant in this study. Larry

is chair of the department in which he resides.

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Parker

Parker is 67-years old, a Caucasian male Professor in a physical science
department at College I, and is retiring at the end of the 2007-2008 academic year. He
holds an endowed chair in his department, and spent five years as Provost of the College.
He received his undergraduate degree at an Ivy League institution, and his doctorate at a
prestigious university in Western Europe. His academic career began in 1967 at an Ivy
League institution, where he stayed until 1970. In 1970, he was hired by College I as an
Associate Professor and granted the title of Professor with tenure in 1976.

His professional awards are numerous and include Rhodes, Fulbright, and
Guggenheim Fellowships. He has over 150 articles in his field. He is committed to
teaching his undergraduate students and more junior colleagues. He sees it as his
responsibility, and the responsibility of other senior colleagues, to play an important role
in socializing newcomers to the field.

In our interview, Parker spoke about his experience in two collaborations in
which he was in the more senior role. The first collaboration Parker talked about was one
with a postdoctoral fellow at an Ivy League institution in a nearby state. The second
collaboration he described was with a former postdoctoral fellow at the same Ivy League
institution, who is now an Assistant Professor at a regional university. Each of these
collaborators were much younger than he (in their late 205 or 305, and in Parker’s words,
the ages of his children), and were trained during very different generations in his field.
Similarly to Gareth, Parker emphasized that most of his intergenerational collaborations
had been with undergraduate students. He is very proud of where his former

undergraduates have gone on to graduate school and academic work.

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Ruby

Ruby is a 39-year Old Caucasian woman and a recently tenured Associate
Professor in a physical science department at an all women’s college, College H. She
accepted her first tenure-track position there in 1998. Ruby received her doctoral degree
from a public research university in the Midwest. She attended a research-oriented liberal
arts college (not represented in this study) as an undergraduate. She had work experience
outside of academia prior to beginning graduate school in the 19905.

Ruby talked about an ongoing collaboration, in which she is the more junior
colleague, with a Professor in the same discipline at a less visible liberal arts college in
another state. Her collaborator, she estimated, is in his late 605. Ruby believes that the
results of this collaboration (a large National Science Foundation grant and publications)
“clinched” her case for tenure. When she arrived at her institution, she was interested in
getting involved in fieldwork in her geographic region. She knew there was a history of
women in her field not being well received by many of the male research teams in the
area. She approached her partner after a friend gave her his name.

This interview was unique in that it took place at Ruby’s house. She lives about
20 minutes from the campus, and recently had a baby. Her husband works out of the
house, but the day of our interview was technically “her day” to care for the child. The
baby-sat with us as we talked, until the baby got fussy and her husband offered to care for
the child for the rest of our discussion. This scenario was a very real reflection of the
challenge Ruby and her husband face balancing two careers. Going to Ruby’s house

made her challenge of balancing work-family very palatable to me.

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Saleem

Saleem is a 39-year old African-American female and an Assistant Professor in a
natural science unit in College A. She is originally from South Africa, and received her
undergraduate and master’s degree in that country. She came to the United States to
receive her doctorate at a public research institution in the Midwest. She earned her PhD.
in 1999, and has been at College A since 2001. Saleem identifies herself as an African
(South) American. She shared a moving story about recently becoming a US. citizen.

Saleem primarily spoke about her experience working on one project with
Doolittle, another participant in this study, as well as the Chair of Saleem’s department.
The project was funded by the federal government and involved faculty from natural and
physical science disciplines.

Saleem reflected upon different aspects of her academic career during our
conversation. Coming to the US. from South Africa was challenging for her — she no
longer had the strong network in science that she did in her home country. Since she left
her doctoral program, she feels like she “floundered” a bit, despite the strong training she
received in her Ph.D. program. She has not had an academic mentor since arriving at
College A in 2001. Her mentors from graduate school thought, in her words, “. . .I
wouldn’t be looking for [the] advice as if I’d gone to a Research I institution.” She shared
a story about an “embarrassing” incident that she became involved in that she attributed
to a lack of intellectual mentorship at College A. Several months after our interview she
shared the news with me that she did not get recommended for tenure, due to what was
perceived as a lack of productivity on her part vis-a-vis the collaboration with Doolittle.

She was frank when she said that she felt the climate for women and people of color

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needed improvement at her college, but acknowledged she also could have stepped up to
the pl ate and been more productive during her time at College A.
Sevren
Sevren is an Associate Professor in a social sciences department at College D, and

Was recently granted tenure at his institution. He is 44-years Old, originally from India
(HOW a permanent US. resident) and came to this College in 1999 after not receiving
tenUre at a public research university in the mid-Atlantic region (he was hired at that

in S1: itution in 1993). He completed his graduate work at a research university in the
M i dwest. He received his undergraduate degree in his home country.

Sevren stated that he had been involved in two significant intergenerational
re Search collaborations, and he discussed them both. Only one fit the criteria for this
Study (the other collaboration occurred during his pre-tenure years at the public research

i nstitution). Sevren’s collaborator at College D was also Indian, and about lO-years

y Ounger than him. His colleague was an Assistant Professor in the department. Severn
Saw real potential in this younger colleague, and asked him to be involved in one of his
pro j ects. Sevren reached out to this junior colleague with the knowledge that only one in
three or four faculty hired as Assistant Professors in their Department get tenure. Sevren
and his colleague have a paper under review at a journal in their field. Sevren shared that
he encouraged his younger colleague to apply for other jobs, as it became Obvious, over
time, that his colleague’s tenure case would not be successful. Ethnicity played an
interesting role in this relationship. Sevren noted that he was more “Americanized” than
his Younger colleague. Sevren believes this helped him to negotiate the cultural terrain of

the Dre-tenure years at this institution. He also mentioned that sharing a country of origin

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vv ith his collaborator created a personal bond between the two. Sevren is in a long-
d i stance relationship with his wife, and said this is challenging for him.
Sorenson

Sorenson is a 59-year Old Professor in a natural sciences discipline at College F,
an a1 1 -women’s college. He has been at the College since 1978, arriving after finishing a
po St—doctoral position at the National Institutes of Health. Sorenson received his
d O Qtorate at a public research institution, and earned his undergraduate degree at an Ivy
L e ague institution.

Due to Sorenson’s age and rank, I presumed that he might talk about
intergenerational collaborations within which he had been senior member. Much to my
S Llll‘1:)rise, he chose to talk about an intergenerational collaboration in which he was a
5 un i or member during the early years of his career. When he arrived at the College in

1 9 7 8, he almost immediately started to collaborate with a female colleague, 20 years his
Sen i or. She was an Associate Professor at the time, and was promoted to Professor within
a few years of Sorenson’s arrival. Sorenson described the “shepherding” role that his
00 l l aborator played in his professional life. Sorenson and his colleague published papers
tOgether and were in general, very close colleagues for many years. Sorenson also talked
about his experience in a more recent. and less intensive, collaboration with a male
ASsi stant Professor at College D.
Spike
Spike is a 41-year old Caucasian male and Associate Professor and department
Chair of a physical sciences department at College H. He received his Ph.D. at an Ivy

League institution, and attended another research-oriented liberal arts college in the same

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region. My discussion with Spike was compelling due to his Openness about how
uncertain he was (and still may be) about staying in academia. He has virtually stopped
engaging in research since his appointment to Department Chair. As is described below,
Spike realized during one of his sabbaticals that his strengths might lie in administration
(as opposed to research). He expressed how horribly overloaded he felt when he was
juggling teaching, research and service activities.

At Spike’s institution, pre-tenure faculty members are given a sabbatical after
their fourth year. Spike used this first sabbatical to go to the west coast and work on
research projects in the lab of a senior scholar in his field. This was a positive experience
for Spike — both in terms of productivity, but also the caring he felt from his senior male
colleague. Spike also talked about a relationship that he developed during his next
sabbatical (post-tenure) with a Professor at an Ivy League school in a neighboring state.

Tiffany

Tiffany is a 37-year-old Assistant Professor in a physical science department and
began her career as a tenure—track professor at College B during the fall of 2003. She
attended a public research institution on the west coast for her doctoral studies, and
received her undergraduate degree from another research-oriented liberal arts college in
this study. Prior to entering her doctoral program, Tiffany served as a consultant in her
field for three years. Tiffany did a post-doc in which she studied a phenomenon in a
different sub-field of her discipline.

Tiffany spoke about a collaboration she was involved in at her institution with a

54‘YCar-old Professor of a natural sciences discipline. Her collaborator, Hank, is also a

Participant in this study. Tiffany and Hank are undertaking a study that initially Hank was

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driving. The grant has been renewed and next year Tiffany will need to take more of a
leadership role.
Tim

Tim is a 28-year-old Caucasian male and an Assistant Professor in a physical
science discipline who has a particular interest in and expertise with statistics. His first
year at his institution, College A was the 2005-2006 academic year. Tim received his
doctorate in 2004 from a public research institution in the northeast. He earned his
undergraduate degree in 2000 from the same institution.

Tim discussed his collaboration with a female colleague who is an Associate
Professor and Chair of an allied science department at his institution. Their joint project
was funded by an internal grant from the College A and focused on the psychological
outcomes of surgery patients. Tim sees this project as more of his collaborator’s than his
own. Tim contributes heavily to the research design and the statistical elements of the
study. Tim’s collaborator is, in his words, “middle-aged”, with children who are in high
school. He doesn’t know her age, but estimates that she is in her forties. In terms of
“academic age”, Tim does not see a big gap. Although he is in his late twenties and she is
in her forties, she only recently got her PhD. The collaborative project is actually an
outgrowth of her dissertation. Tim actually sees himself bringing more experience to the
collaboration in terms of the grant submission process. His collaborator brings expertise
in the content area they are working on.

When Tim arrived at the College in 2005, he made initial contact with the allied

health department, saying he would be interested in becoming involved in research

Projects with faculty there. Tim was proactive in advertising his statistical skills. There

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was not an immediate response to his expression of interest at that time. However, his
collaborator approached him during the summer of 2006 and asked him if he wanted to
collaborate. Tim’s patience and proactive outreach made this project possible. The pair is
now applying for a larger grant from a federal agency.

Tim projects incredible confidence. He is clear about his professional abilities,
and what he wants to get done at the college (build a stronger statistical resource base at
the college). He is very comfortable at College A, and seems confident that he will get
tenure. However, he is also confident that he could bring valuable skills elsewhere if he is
not promoted and retained at his institution.

Wanda

Wanda is 50-year old female Professor in a social science department at College
C. Wanda attended one of the top universities for scholars in her field for her doctoral
degree. After receiving her PhD. in 1985, Wanda went to work for the federal
government in Washington, DC. In 1988, due to family obligations, she and her family
moved from DC. to the Midwest, and considered jobs in both corporate and academic
settings. She ended up being hired as a faculty member in 1988 at another research-
oriented liberal arts institution in the region (where she stayed for 10 years, got tenure,
and served as division chair). Wanda had friends at College C, and spent a year there as a
visiting professor during the 1997-1998 school year. She was then invited to apply for a
faculty opening at College C (but without tenure). She took the risk and went ahead and
accepted an Associate Professor position (without tenure) in 1998. Within a year she

received tenure, and was later promoted to Professor.

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Wanda chose to talk about a collaboration with a recently tenured Associate
Professor in her department. She has known this man (17-years her junior) since his
undergraduate years at the initial college she worked for in the region. The have shared
interests in labor economics and race issues. Their collaboration started right after her
colleague’s third year review. Family obligations and teaching pressures for both of them
slowed their project down a bit. But they are looking forward to having an article come
out of their work soon.

Wanda was never driven to teach at a liberal arts college: “. . .coming to a liberal
arts college initially wasn’t my gut feeling of what I wanted to do.” In fact, teaching was
not necessarily on her radar screen at all. She experienced big political challenges at the
first college she taught at in the region. During her sabbatical as a visiting professor at her
current institution, she realized that the students were, in her words, “incredible” and that
she was really enjoying the work. That is when she decided to apply for the job at
College C.

Summary Comments of Chapter Four

The aim of this chapter was two-fold. First, I wanted to paint a picture Of the
sample of faculty that participated in this study, bringing the reader’s attention to some
Characteristics of the group as a whole, and of the collaborations within which
participants were engaged. I discussed the dimensions of the sample that were quite
diverse, such as the geographical locations Of the institutions in which the faculty
Participants work, the broad disciplinary areas that are represented in the sample, as well

as the gender composition of certain sub-samples in the study. I also pointed out that the

gender composition of the faculty who held more senior generational positions, as well as

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the ethnic composition Of the entire group was quite homogeneous (male and Caucasian).
I highlighted qualities of the forty collaborations talked about by the participants over the
course of my interviews with them, with particular attention paid to the mix of inter-
disciplinary and intra-disciplinary collaborations, and inter-institutional and intra-
institutional collaborations. I concluded this chapter with rich biographical sketches of
the participants, including personal, professional and collaboration information on each

individual. I now will turn to Chapter Five and present the primary findings of this study.

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research question posed in this study: What is the nature of intergenerational research
collaborations as experienced by faculty at research-oriented liberal arts colleges? To

develop a comprehensive answer, I considered four additional questions:

I.

Figure 5.1 presents a diagram of the conceptual framework I will use to guide the reader

CHAPTER FIVE — FINDINGS

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with answers to the central

What attributes of individual faculty members’ impact their experience of the
nature of intergenerational research collaborations?

What contextual factors impact the faculty members’ experience of the nature
of intergenerational research collaborations?
What collaborative processes are a part of faculty members’ experiences of
the nature of intergenerational research collaborations?

What individual outcomes are a part of faculty members’ experiences of the

nature Of intergenerational research collaborations?

through the presentation of the study findings in this chapter.

Figure 5.]

   

Individual
Attributes

    
     
    
   
   
 

Individual
Outcomes

Collaborative
Processes

  

 

  

Contextual
Factors

Framework guiding discussion of findings

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Although definitions of the terms used in this study were introduced in Chapter
Three, and information about the composition of the sample was included in Chapter
Four, I will repeat some Of that material here, to support the reader in understanding the
findings laid out in this chapter.

The study sample included 13 faculty who talked about their experiences as junior
partners in collaborations, 12 faculty that spoke of their experiences as senior partners in
collaborations, and one faculty member who spoke about his experience as a junior
partner in one collaboration, and a senior partner in another. I am using the words
“senior” and “junior” to refer to the relative positioning of faculty members within
collaborations. I am not using “senior” and “junior” to refer to a specific chronological
age, life stage, career age or intellectual generation of an individual. The participants self-
identified as “junior" or “senior” during the screening process for this study. In this
document, I will use modifications Of the phrases “junior/senior faculty” and “faculty in a
junior/senior role” interchangeably.

Individual Attributes
To understand how the study participants experienced the nature of

intergenerational research collaborations, I examined the individual attributes of
participants that appeared to impact the nature of the intergenerational research
collaborations within which they were involved. The results of this study reveal that
attributes of individual participants, in addition to attributes of their research partners,
Played a central role in how these intergenerational collaborations proceeded. Three
broad categories of individual attributes emerged from the data. They included:

generational attributes, motivations, and dispositions of individual collaborators.

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Generational Attributes

Do generational differences play a role in influencing the processes and/or
outcomes faculty research collaborations? I posed this question twice in my interviews
with participating faculty. In the early stages of each interview, I asked participants to
compare themselves to their collaborator in terms of a set of generational attributes
(chronological age, career stage, life stage, and intellectual generation). I posed the
question: “Did this difference play any role in your motivation or consideration to get
involved in this collaboration?” Second, in the closing moments of the interview, I asked
participants whether or not they believed that generational attributes impacted the nature
Of their collaboration with their colleagues.

It became clear to me that, for this sample of faculty, generational dimensions
were not the most salient attribute of their partner (or themselves) impacting the nature of
the relationship (25 of 26 participants). One exception came from Callithrix, a Professor
in a natural science department at College F. Callithrix said a career stage difference was
the driving reason for entering into the relationship with her junior colleague in another
department. Callithrix felt that it was a part of her role as senior faculty member and
leader of an interdisciplinary program to collaborate with her junior colleague:

Yeah, it was my main motivation. I was interested in the topic, but I did it - my
rationale was the leadership component piece.

Although the majority of participants agreed that the generational differences between
they and their collaborative partners were not the most salient variables impacting the
nature of the collaborations, there was agreement that differences in generational

attributes did exert influence on the partnerships. In the next several paragraphs I will

present how participants saw chronological age, life stage, career stage, and/or

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intellectual generation being more or less salient in their collaborations with their faculty
partners.
Chronological A ge

The chronological age of a participant’s collaborative partner, a participant’s
perception of that age, and the corresponding difference in age between the participant
and collaborative partner, played a role in four collaborations described by junior
participants in this study (one-third of the junior respondents)

Ruby and Spike found comfort in relationships with their older colleagues
because their senior colleagues reminded them of positive relationships they had with
their parents. Ruby was very explicit about how much her collaborator reminded her of
her father with whom which she was very close:

His [senior collaborator’ 5] age there's this whole undercurrent of what

makes you hang out with the people you hang out with I was basically

parented by my father... and in some ways, [senior collaborator] reminds me

of my father, who is a very gentle person. And he looks a little bit like my father.

I remember after the second year [when ] we were working together, I was

over staying at his place, and his wife took one look at me, and he was like, "Oh,

my god, you look like Bob's estranged daughter." I mean he's exactly the
same age as my father, and I'm exactly the same age as his daughter. Some of
that stuff has helped us be attracted to each other.
Spike was clear that as a result of being raised as an only child by Older parents, he was
very comfortable working with senior collaborators:

For whatever it’s worth, my parents also were older. My mom was 42 when I was

born My dad was a little younger. He was 36 So I had older parents

growing up I did grow up an only child, and maybe that's part of the feeling
comfortable in relationships with adults People who are a generation older
than me now.

Gareth, a Professor Of natural sciences at College J, thinks broadly about fields other than

his own. In our interview, his thinking about psychology (he refers to himself as an

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“armchair psychologist”), philosophy and spirituality were particularly evident. Gareth
said that he believes people see things differently at different ages and therefore
“increase[d] the likelihood that any given person will be able to transcend themselves.”
Gareth also talked about what he saw as “oedipal problems” that occur between
collaborators Of different ages:
There are oedipal problems particularly for most males there is a tension
between somebody’s enjoyment [of working] with someone else and a fear of
being — of having one’s development blocked by someone else incidentally this
then goes the other way as well [a junior collaborator] has a tendency to try
and find places where he can actively disagree with me even though he really
doesn’t want to disagree with me on that point.
A final example of how a participant experienced an age difference with a collaborative
partner came from Doc, an Associate Professor in a physical science unit at College H.
As Doc asserted, “If you equate age with wealth of experience. . .he’s built a lot of
experiments he’s seen all kinds of stuff happen, and so he’s seen 40 years worth and
I’ve only seen 20 years worth.” Age is Often considered an indicator of the three other
generational attributes I explored in this study.
Life Stage
Eight Of the 26 participants (two-thirds of the junior participants) said that
becoming a parent and raising young children impacted, and/or was impacted by, their
participation in their intergenerational research collaborations. These participants talked
about their desire to spend time with their families, while also feeling under immense
pressure to fulfill their responsibilities as faculty members. Others noted that their status
as parents influenced their decision to get involved in the collaborations with their senior

colleagues in the first place. Other faculty talked about how their roles as parents

decreased the amount of time they could spend working with their research partners.

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Finally, several (4) faculty holding senior roles perceived the pregnancy and ensuing
parental status of their junior colleagues as either slowing down their collaborations with
them, or being the cause of junior colleagues getting a “slow start” as a faculty member.
Andrew, an Assistant Professor in a humanities department in College A,
described how he was hired in the Fall of 2005, started his collaboration in January 2006,
and had his second child in May of 2006. He described this as a time where he felt pulled
in different directions by his different Obligations:
I wanted so much to give more time to it [the collaborative project], but I just
haven't. I haven't been able to or I have chosen not to, I don't know we had a
baby in May [2006] And so and I really don't even know what I did that last
summer... we had a new baby and 1-year-old, so it was busy And my
family's very important to me.
Julia, a recently tenured professor in a social science department at College B, also
expressed the tension she felt in her role as mother and faculty member:
[I] have this feeling of having been so maxed out. You know, getting here at 5:30
am. on, both Saturday and Sunday morning this weekend so I could get home
by 9:30 50 my kids didn't know I was missing.
Although she often considers leaving the academy, Julia said that her research
collaboration with an emeritus professor from her department has kept her faculty job:
I think it’s kept me in the job. I constantly think about leaving work. I'm actually
writing a book on highly educated married women with children opting out of the
labor force [Laughter]. And life looks good.
Tim, an Assistant Professor in a physical science unit at College A, also finds balancing
his love for work and family quite difficult. He struggles with easing up on work tasks to
spend time with his wife and child:
I mean it's [the collaboration] just one more time commitment, and I think that's

been tougher, especially since having a child and my wife's not going back to
work this fall, and, really, I want to be better at separating out and making sure I

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have a good balance for me I love what I do so much and give too much time
to it. So, anyway, so that's part of a bigger - it doesn't apply just to this project.

Finally, Sorenson, reflecting upon the collaborations he engaged in early in his career
with a senior female colleague. talked openly about the pressure he felt upon his arrival at
College F:

It’s a really hard decision to make when you're going to stop doing something and

really immerse yourself in family. That's a struggle Because there's always

more to do, there's always more work, there's always yet the next paper, there's
always yet the next lecture, this, that, and the other, and it is a struggle.

A few of the junior faculty talked about how their status as parents directly
influenced their decision to get involved in the collaboration with a senior colleague.
Tiffany, an Assistant Professor at College B, talked about how she specifically chose to
get involved in the collaboration with her senior colleague (Hank) because she knew it
would give her access to a local field site.

I was motivated to have a local project for personal reasons and for academic

reasons because I was pregnant and I had this really little baby So those

were good reasons.
Up until starting her job at the College, Tiffany undertook research in very remote
locations. With small children at home, it was just not feasible for her to keep working in
areas thousands of miles away. Tiffany’s senior collaborator, Hank, mentioned her
pregnancy in the context of telling me how they began working together:

She was also pregnant at the time, and was looking for some local projects as

well, so she wouldn't be traveling as much. And especially, in this kind of

institution, looking for projects that she could do collaboratively with students in
the local area.

Two participants, Ruby and Clara, talked specifically about how their role as

parents decreased the amount of time they could spend in their intergenerational research

collaborations. Ruby, a recently tenured Associate Professor at College G, said her

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pregnancy and child-care responsibilities changed her role in the collaboration with her
senior colleague who is at another liberal arts college. However, Ruby expressed
satisfaction that they (she and her collaborative partner) were able to come to a new
agreement and develop new expectations for their work together:

I remember when I was like, "I'm pregnant." And he [her collaborator] was like,
"Oh, my goodness." He was very excited So when I realized I'm not gonna be
the best collaborator for a while, he's like, "Don't worry, I knew that." (Laughter)
we even talked about it I said basically I'm just not gonna be able to be

in the field for like a month or even weeks at a time necessarily. And so we talked
about what would be the ways that we could keep working together that would
respect that. And we actually came up with - there's sort of smaller scale stuff that
I could do that would continue to compliment the kinds of stuff he's interested in.
It would be less like [a] collaboration of equals, but it would keep me engaged in
the stuff. [The project] would be more driven by him than me or both of us.

Clara also described telling her collaborator about her pregnancy and being uncertain as
to how much she would be able to be involved after the baby is born:

I hadn't seen him all summer, and so when I came in he was like, "What's going

on?" Because he was actually gonna talk about increasing our collaboration and

me taking on more responsibility He's like, "Okay, I don't know if you want to
do this anymore." I'm like, "Yeah, I don't think 50." [MM: Do you think

eventually you will or do you think no?]I think that it's definitely a possibility. I

have no idea what this whole kid thing is like So I'll have to see - you

know, I guess my first priority is here with the students and my teaching, and I

still want to do the research and want to keep up that collaboration.

In addition to the participants in this study who were pregnant and/or parents to
young children, three senior male faculty mentioned how the pregnancy junior colleagues
(or their junior colleagues spouses) slowed work on their joint projects, as well as on the
junior faculty members’ careers.

Parker was quite clear that his participation in intergenerational research

collaborations were invaluable to him, but recognized his frustration of the sometimes

slow pace of work:

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I certainly could have moved faster if I'd simply hired out to get the expertise I
needed and not done any Of this mentoring and waiting around while they all
went through having their children, getting tenure and all that.

In responding to a question I posed about whether he experienced any key

moments in his collaboration with his more junior colleague, Doolittle paused and

responded:

Well, oh, boy. [PAUSE] Well, I don’t know, really. [PAUSE] She became
pregnant. That kind of set us back a little bit There are a number of things that
set us back Not just in her life, but - so that slowed her ability to [Yeah, so her
life stage?] Yeah And that wasn't really a big deal.

Hank, when talking about a second collaboration he was (and still is) engaged in

with a junior colleague in his department, mentioned her pregnancy and subsequent leave

very benignly. First, he mentioned that hisjunior colleague wanted to find a local field

site:

SO the other one [research collaboration] is with a new faculty member in [his
department] This is [junior collaborator’s] first or second year. It depends on
how you talk about it. We hired her to start last year on tenure track, and when
she came, she was pregnant. So she didn't teach. She taught a little last year, but
she was here on campus and was starting things but also had a new baby

So she came on campus. She just finished her PhD. and all of her research
was in New Zealand So she wasn't gonna be doing fieldwork there anytime
soon. At least right away. So she was looking for sort of a project she could work
on locally [junior collaborator] needed to get started and get stuff up and
running. She was interested in something local...

Hank suggested that he felt his collaborator had a “slow start”, in part, because of her

lack of experience teaching, a quieter personality, and maternity leave:

I think [junior collaborator] needed a start, needed a little a little jump-start
And she had just finished her Ph.D. She had taken a year or two and done a
little bit of teaching after her master's. SO she had a little bit of teaching
experience, but not much experience in so pretty fresh. And [junior
collaborator] is a pretty quiet person. I think [she] was having a little trouble,
especially 'cause she wasn't really deeply into teaching yet 'cause she was on
maternity leave, and she was [not] around here. And so she was having a little
trouble sort of figuring out how to get started in some ways.

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These participants identified this particular stage of adult life as salient to their
experiences in the collaboration within which they were involved. Further research about
the impact of other life stages or transitions on a faculty members’ participation in an
intergenerational research collaboration are potential directions for future research.
Career Stage
Six of the collaborators holding a more junior role (about half) in research
partnerships clearly stated that they were uncomfortable collaborating with peers,
colleagues of the same career stage. Several talked about how intergenerational
collaborations took the ‘competition’ factor out of the equation in research partnerships.
Julia talked about how nice it was to collaborate with her colleague who was in
the process of a phased retirement:
[Senior collaborator] was on his way out that just frees up a space and
academics are competitive, you know and to be able to take that competition
factor out.
Anachem shared similar sentiments as he spoke about how much he liked learning from
and working with, in his words, “Older professors”:
I can definitely say this this might seem like this didn't make any
difference, but I think the older professors are more Open than the young
professors they're more open I would say in terms of accepting your ideas
and in letting you just kind of explore different things; whereas young professors,
I think, to be honest, that sometimes they're out to prove something, and so to
be honest, I prefer working with Older professors.
When I asked Andrew whether the intergenerational nature of his collaboration was
salient to him he said:
One thing that comes to mind maybe the competitiveness isn't there quite as
much I mean I think with peers and so I always - that's always in the back

of my mind. I don't know if that's me or if it's normal, but certainly there is that
But I think, like I said, if they're too close there's kind of a competitiveness,

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there's also kind of, a less of a willingness to be critiqued or criticized or
corrected or guided. That's probably silly, but it's the case. (Laughter) And
even though you're each in your own tenure-track slot, and being evaluated on
your own merits.

Ruby talked about one of the reasons her collaboration with a senior partner was 50

positive:

It’s great to have somebody who’s very near retirement who’s made his name —
he could care less about stuff. So we submitted an NSF grant, and I wrote it, and
he said, “Don’t even put my name on it — just pay me as a consultant.

Spike also talked about one of his senior collaborators as being very generous as well
I would say about him, by the way, is that he’s a very generous guy. . .I think there
was one other collaboration of myself with someone else, but it came about
through his involvement And he, I think, declined to be an author on that
publication. He said, oh, just put me in the acknowledgements. The point being
that he’s generous. That’s right. [MM2 He’s not a turf guy] Absolutely.
Several of the senior participants reinforced this notion when they talked about

how they were very laid back about authorship issues and credit of the products of these

collaborations.

Intellectual Generation
Several participants (seven of26) talked about their collaborators as being Of a

different intellectual generation than themselves. Gareth, a Professor at College I,

expressed concern that the new generation of faculty were being trained too narrowly,

and he felt some responsibility to work with the colleagues to help broaden their
perspectives.
Larry, a senior faculty member in the social sciences talked about four different

collaborations that he had been involved with and referred to the paradigm differences

between him and one of his junior colleagues:

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[Junior colleague’s] questions are more political than mine and he's quite
interested in minority issues and what he calls the "shadow government" and the
kind of critique of [traditional tenets of his discipline]. I'm, of course, of an era
when you wanted to [engage in activity supporting the traditional tenets of the
discipline]. SO he's holding up a mirror of questioning some of the [fundamental
assumptions of the field].

In talking about another collaboration, Larry talked about how their differences in
intellectual generations helped clarify their roles on the project:

I think it was nice that I had a clear role of the history of the places and how

they've changed and how it worked. That was kind Of the benefit of being in place

and old. I had kind of a connection of social and ethnic stuff, which

[partner] didn't have. SO it was - and she had all of this brand new stuff with

[industry] stuff, as well as traditional quantitative [methods].

Mambi, a recently tenured Associate Professor and another collaborator of Larry’s talked
about differences he saw between Larry and himself. He believed these differences were
a product of their eras of training:

I think [he] approach[s] the discipline in a different way he's an older school

[specialist in his discipline] his understanding of [discipline] is just - it's

different than mine since he was trained, postmodernism came on the

scene and influenced a lot I don't want say he “pooh-poohs”

postmodernism, but he's less enamored with it than people who have been trained

from my generation.

Mambi went on to say that Larry’s connections with the “Older school” disciplinary
faculty were invaluable to him in producing the reader they produced.

Wanda, Professor at College C, talked about how the difference in intellectual
generation between her and her junior colleague allowed them to access different
networks for feedback on their joint work:

We also knew people of different ages. Part of the different areas Of the

profession, and that would happen regardless of generation, but he knew that he

could send us work for some of his former classmates, and I knew I could send it
to some of mine, and you'd get different responses [how it] sits in the literature,

have you thought about this sort of thing, and so I think that was another value—
added.

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Julia, a recently tenured Associate Professor at College B, was quite Open about
how she really had an appreciation for the “old stuff” in her field. She never felt a part of
the postmodern movement in graduate school: “I think it was a time where people found
[their] grounding or just didn’t move on and in some ways I’m a neo-
functionalist.” She went on to say how she actually feels more connected with the
generation of scholars, like her collaborator (an emeritus professor from her department),
who were trained before the postmodern movement:

They were very anti-postmodemism and they were like, “Let’s do grounded

research” and at some point, it clicked in, for me that the people would also

be in the powerful positions in the departments who would be doing the hiring
there’s always data in my papers and [senior collaborator] believed in that...

In addition to paradigmatic differences, differences in intellectual generations
were also expressed in terms of different levels of comfort with research tools in the
discipline.

Parker was very clear about how his lack of experience with computers (relative
to his junior collaborators) often motivated him to get involved in collaborative projects
with junior colleagues:

[It] comes back to the intergenerational thing. I'm of the generation pre-

computers. So my skills in that regard are really shaky. I often reach out to folks

who have those specific skills which everybody age 50 and younger does.
Parker also says he likes to work with colleagues of a younger intellectual generation to

serve as models for his undergraduate students:

To be co-authors and collaborators with these things and I think it helps them to
see a younger generation who are more energetic, more computer hip than I am.

Only one participant, Doc, talked about some of his small frustrations with the

technological divide between him and one of his senior collaborators:

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The challenge is just the disparity of culture. He really is an old-time he
doesn't use slide rules Tablets with calculations on them, and he has rulers and
pencils, different kinds of mechanical pencils SO [I was] a little bit frustrated
with the lack of connection to computer design tools, that sort of thing. He'll say,

"Okay here you go. Try this out and then we'll code it up and put it in the

computer."

Thus according to participants in this study, differences in intellectual generation
were reflected across many dimensions including the depth or breadth of training,
paradigms embraced, access to networks, familiarity with disciplinary content, and
technical skills of use in the discipline.

In addition to generational characteristics, motivations of individual collaborators
also impacted faculty experiences of the nature of intergenerational research
collaborations. Motivations of individual collaborators will be discussed next.

Motivations of Individual Collaborators

As mentioned earlier, generational attributes were not the primary motivation for
faculty in this sample to get involved in an intergenerational research collaboration. Most
(25/26) faculty I interviewed were motivated first and foremost to participate in their
intergenerational research collaborations by the scholarship itself. Participants articulated
this motivation in different ways. Parker, a faculty participant from College I, said “the
science” was his primary motivation, Cassandra (College B) mentioned “the topic”,
Sorenson (College F) referred to “the interesting research question”, Anachem (College
B) talked about the opportunity to engage in research with another discipline, and Doc
referred to the “ideas” as being motivating for him.

Participants also suggested that they were also motivated by specific qualities that

characterized their collaborative partners. The qualities mentioned most often as being

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appealing included both disciplinary expertise/technical knowledge and access to
different professional networks and resources.
Disciplinary Expertise/Technical Knowl edge

Participants holding more senior roles in collaborations were drawn to the
disciplinary expertise and/or technical knowledge of their more junior partners. Eleven of
the 26 participants talked about how the disciplinary expertise and/or technical
knowledge of their collaborators motivated them to get involved in their projects. Of the
1 1, nine of them were senior faculty and two of them were junior faculty. I provide two
examples below.

Ellen, a Professor in a humanities department at College A, was attracted to
working with her junior partner in a social science discipline because he had particular
methodological knowledge that she did not:

It seemed to be to be the kind of thing where it would be good to have

someone who knew how to do [methodological] work And [collaborative

partner] and I had some conversations about [the research topic]. I knew

he was interested enough in the topic that it might interest him. And so, I

asked him whether he wanted to work on this project.

Wanda, a social scientist and Professor at College C, stated that although she and her
junior partner were from the same discipline, her partner is “younger” and “his
[quantitative social science] techniques are more up-to-date [than mine].” Larry, a
Professor and Department Chair, talked about how he wanted to work with a female
Assistant Professor in his department who had the quantitative skills to move a research
project forward that would benefit the local community:

SO with [collaborator’s] quantitative skills my kind of long history working

with [the local community], we got a small grant and [collaborator] designed

kind of a methodology of gathering data and mapping it. So she knows all about
that [Collaborator] kind of managed the quantitative research part of this

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Collaborators ' Access to Networks and Resources

Thirty percent of individuals in the faculty sample (eight of 26 participants) were
drawn to the networks and resources that the collaborative partner had to offer. Of these
eight faculty, seven were junior and mentioned the attraction of the senior collaborator’s
resources].

Some of these faculty were attracted to the field sites to which the senior
colleague could provide access. As mentioned previously, Tiffany and Ruby, both
Assistant Professors at the start of their respective collaborations, were interested in
working with their senior collaborators because they provided access to field sites that
were closer to the colleges in which they were working. Tiffany was looking for field
sites closer to home, as she was caring for a young child:

I was motivated to have a local project for personal reasons and for academic

reasons, again, including more students in my own research, which is a good

thing.
Ruby was interested in finding a field site that contained the environmental material she
was interested in:

I'm really interested in these [environmental formations], but I need a [specialist]

to work with and so I was saying [to a friend], "I don't know where to find a

[specialist] who would be willing to do this” And [friend] said, "Oh, you

should meet this guy [Ruby’s eventual collaborator], who is leading a field trip

on the coast of [state Tiffany wants to work in]." And so when I got back, I

called him, and I said, "I know I missed the deadline for your field trip, but I'd

love to go on it.". .. And I said right up front, "[friend’s name] suggested maybe

you might [want to] collaborate with me [and] he said, "If you want to move to
my field area, I'd love to collaborate with you ”

 

I Barry, a participant who talked about his role as a senior partner, indicated that resources were the reason
why his collaborator approached him.

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Doc, an Associate Professor at College H, talked about the benefits of a very
large, multi-institutional collaboration within which he is involved:

It's access to this network and these minds and this intellectual endeavor. It's just

that we're pretty isolated here at these liberal arts colleges without graduate

students or post does to be our sort of fingers into the rest of the community and

teaching so much we're not on a day-tO-day basis, hooked into what's going on.

So it's really through these voices of experience, I get wind of what's the latest

solar physics observation that somebody discovered, as we wrote grants and so

on, he was able to bring in a lot of ideas that I didn't have access to. You'll see

he's read all the papers and been to those meetings And the big networks. SO

he's very well connected.
In talking about his experience writing a reader for his discipline, Mambi discussed the
importance of his collaborator’s connection to different sub-disciplines in his field:

[I wanted] someone who had complementary skills or networks we work in

different sub-disciplines of [discipline], he has a different network than I

do, and that's very useful if you're thinking about catering to different audiences.

not only is he in touch with that community, but he is aware of their interests.

Not surprisingly, different collaborators were motivated by different individual
attributes of their partners. The scholarly topic motivated the majority of participants in
this study. The junior participants appeared to have been motivated by access to resources
their senior collaborators could provide. The senior collaborators seemed to be motivated
by the disciplinary expertise and technical skills of their junior colleagues.

Dispositions of Collaborators

A final category of individual attributes (in addition to generational characteristics
and motivational factors) that participants demonstrated were a set of dispositions, or
personality traits. These dispositions included:

1. an openness to learning; and

2. an ability to not only subjectively experience the collaboration within

which they were involved, but also the ability to objectively understand

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how the needs of the collaboration and their own personal and
professional needs were separate from one another other.
Openness to Learning
Several of the participants articulated and/or demonstrated their deep comfort
with, and enjoyment of, being in the role of learner within the context of their
collaborations with their colleagues.
Early in our interview, Anachem talked about how he has been very open to
learning from his senior colleague:
I guess I was just very open. I was just willing to learn. I've been open to his
ideas, in how he actually thinks and how he actually puts things together.
Later, Anachem said how he saw it as his responsibility to actively build his knowledge
base in his senior collaborator’s natural science discipline. He primarily felt the need to
be a proactive learner because he felt a responsibility to students on his team. He was not
hesitant to demonstrate things he didn’t know to his students:
And I'll be honest with you, I tell this to my students all the time I have a
[book on the topic of expertise Of his collaborator], and that's because the last
[course in the natural science discipline Of his collaborator], and that was back in
'80, and I'll be very honest with you, I have such a difficult time adjusting [a piece
of equipment used by scientists in collaborator’s field], and I just have the
students show me how to do it, but I tell the students that this is not my area of
study, but in order for me to kind of understand what [collaborator] is saying, to
help you all, then I have to kind of go back I guess because, to be honest, I'm
teaching but I'm learning at the same time, and I'm trying to learn as I would learn
as a student, and I'm not looking at things at a superficial level. I'm trying
to really, really understand I've been spending a lot more time reading articles
in [collaborator’s area of expertise].
In our interview, Anachem described a situation with a student working on his

intergenerational research team that resulted in him being humbled by what he did not

know. Anachem was very open to being in this state of “not-knowing” with his students.

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I've had questions posed to me that I did not have the answer for it felt
different. ...One of the students working in the project says, "[Anachem], what is
[fact that collaborator is an expert on]?" I gave kind of like a superficial
answer. One of my other students was just kind of listening and then he
says, "Well, hey, [Anachem] this is really what [fact] is." [Laughter] And I said,
“[Student], why didn't you just speak up?"... And he's like, "Oh, [Anachem], I
just wanted to see how much you knew." SO it was one of those moments that
like, oh, my goodness, you know so from that standpoint, trying to still stay in
tune with what's going on in [his field] but at the same time still keeping up with
the [discipline of collaborator] end.

Callithrix also was very aware of how the collaboration she was in really forced
her to try to understand material written with very different epistemological assumptions
than those in her discipline. Despite what was some discomfort, she said she was open to
learning:

SO I start reading... and I quickly go, "What's the purpose of this chapter? I

don't see what this chapter is doing how am I making these connections, and
what kind of connections are valid? What kind of connections are off target?
Where is the target?" So I want to be as helpful as I can, but I'm not so certain
what that is. But I'm willing to learn and try to see. So then I try to do what

I think is useful, and then I wait to try to get a feel for whether or not that was
actually useful.

Callithrix provided a wonderful metaphor of her learning experience in this collaboration:

A Japanese macaque population - they found potatoes, and they were very dirty,
and they were not a normal food source until one macaque took this dirty potato,
took it to the edge of the water, washed it off, and then ate it. And then pretty
soon, all the other macaques were doing it. Well, that macaque happened to be a
juvenile and not an adult, 50 that was a case where the juvenile influenced the
other generation to a new food source, and it was a social gilitation, observational
learning sort Of situation.

Larry also demonstrated his openness to learning during a “key moment” in his
collaboration when his junior colleague challenged his interpretation of the quantitative

results:

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When we ran the correlation coefficients, I thought they were low and I said to
her, "Gee, this doesn't look very good tO me." She pointed out to me that I totally
was out of touch with quantitative research in social science. We actually had
very high correlation. I thought, "Well, gee, this doesn't look very good." she
went and pulled a bunch of studies that were published and showed how actually
our findings were more convincing than those in the literature. So that was the
real eye opener for me.

Ability to objectively examine one ’5 self in the context of the collaboration
Several of the faculty demonstrated an amazing ability to think meta-cognitively

about their relationship with their collaborators.
Julia demonstrated an impressive understanding of her position as an early career

faculty member vis-a-vis her collaboration with a senior colleague:
Any problem, or difficulty, I was facing and know that, for the most part, I could
get feedback that was in my best interest. But at the same time, I’m also
politically savvy enough to realize that [senior collaborator] would have always
had an interest; he built this department. And, so, I can’t come in with this chaotic
mess, “Oh my God, I don’t know what I’m doing, help me.”. so there’s always
this little dance that we do, and I think we both are savvy enough about human
dynamics, we know we’re doing the dance.

Clara, an Assistant Professor at College E, talked about how she realized, as her research

collaboration progressed, that she also had to think about what she needed to do for

herself, in addition to her responsibilities to the collaboration with her senior partner:
When we wrote this one grant and it was a two—to-one match, which is really high
match. We needed more match money and I ended up matching more of my
salary than I would now if I were to write the grant again. You know, because it
ended up that I used —1 think I got paid for two weeks and I matched with three or
four weeks, or something like that But for me not quite thinking entirely
through, “Okay, well [what] does this actually mean for me and my time, and for
what it means for the other things I can do and commitments I can make?”

Anachem talked about the balance he tried to strike between being both interdependent

with and independent from his senior colleague: “I’m trying to develop, as a biologist

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would say, my own niche here, my own place here, but at the same time, you need
individuals to kind of help you kind of feel things out.”

Hank was very aware of balancing his desire to get things accomplished in the
collaboration and his knowledge of his junior collaborator’s other commitments as a
junior faculty member:

I'm completely focused on this project. And [junior collaborator] also doing

another project in addition to this one. So there are times when I want her to be

here, or I want to grab her for something when she's not available 'cause she's
doing another project that she — from a mentoring perspective, I should be saying
yes, she needs to do that. She needs to finish that up. She needs to get the
publications out.

Concluding Remarks — Individual Attributes

Individual attributes, in addition to the aforementioned collaborative processes
and contextual elements. are important to understand to develop a full picture of
intergenerational research collaborations. Individual attributes of study participants
impacted how faculty experienced the intergenerational research collaboration with
which they were involved. Three categories of individual attributes emerged from the
data — generational dimensions, motivational factors, and individual dispositions.

Although generational differences did not drive the majority of the faculty in this
study to get involved in an intergenerational research collaboration, faculty agreed that
generational characteristics were salient to their experiences in these partnerships. A
handful of participants talked about how working with someone older than they were was
comfortable, and how the experience that comes with age was invaluable. Participants
disclosed that when a collaborator was in a life stage defined by being parents to young

children, the research collaboration was impacted. Family obligations were one additional

commitment for already overcommitted junior faculty trying to jump-start their careers.

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More than half of the junior participants reported feelings of competition with
colleagues Of the same career stage. The lack of competitive feelings was one reason why
participants collaborated with senior colleagues in the first place. Differences in
intellectual generation were also noted, and revealed themselves in reports of
paradigmatic differences, technical abilities, and access to scholarly networks.

Individuals holding senior roles in collaborations most often expressed that they
were motivated to get involved in a collaboration with a junior faculty member because
of the junior colleague’s differential access to and knowledge of disciplinary concepts
and techniques. Individuals holding junior roles were motivated to get involved in a
collaboration with a senior colleague because of the senior colleague’s access to
professional networks.

Finally, some participants demonstrated particular dispositions - Openness to
learning, as well as an ability to differentiate their own professional needs as faculty from
the needs of the collaboration and/or collaborator.

Now that I have discussed the individual attributes of faculty participants that
impacted their experiences of the nature of intergenerational research collaborations, I
will now turn to the topic of contextual attributes. How did contextual attributes impact
how faculty participants experienced the nature of these collaborations?

Contextual Factors
Introduction
The institutions in this study — research-oriented liberal arts colleges — are some

of this country’s oldest and most established institutions of higher learning. In this section

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I will describe the contextual attributes that appeared to impact the intergenerational
research collaborations within which participants in this study were involved.
Heavy Undergraduate Involvement in Research

In general, the mentoring and advising of undergraduate students in research at
these colleges represents a significant part of the teaching responsibilities of each faculty
member. Therefore, it was not surprising to learn that undergraduate students played
crucial roles within the intergenerational research projects of faculty in this study. Some
departments required that students have an undergraduate research experience to
graduate. Other institutions had tremendous financial support to pay students for working
in faculty labs over the summer months.

Over half (fifteen of twenty-six) of the participants reported that undergraduates
played a key role in the intergenerational research collaborations within which they were
involved. When I initially screened the faculty for participation in this study, several
asked if they could talk about intergenerational collaborations with students only, and not
with faculty. For two senior faculty members in particular, they believed that it was
crucial that I understood their experience working with undergraduates to fully
understand their experience engaging in intergenerational research collaborations with
faculty colleagues.

At the beginning of my interview with Gareth, a Professor in a natural science
department at College J, I asked him to talk about an intergenerational faculty
collaboration he had been involved with:

In fact I hadn’t thought about this before, but when you used the word salient -

- what suddenly popped into my mind was a group of undergraduates that I was

working with shortly after I got to [College J] who made some observations
and posed some questions that fundamentally changed the kind of research that

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I went on [to do] the upshot of that was that I more or less gave up thinking

primarily about how space is represented in the brain and started thinking more

about how the nervous system is organized to support exploration and novelty. . .at

this point I have equal collaborations with students and with other faculty.
Gareth asserted that it was crucial for me to understand the experience described above in
order for me to comprehend how work with students forced a shift in Gareth’s
epistemological lens. The results of this epistemological shift influenced Gareth’s entire
research agenda for the rest of his career.

Like Gareth, Parker began our conversation re-emphasizing the importance of his
scholarly collaborations with students: “I will repeat a reservation I made earlier. And
that is an awful lot of my intergenerational research collaborations have been with
students.” Parker and I continued the interview and discussed his experiences within
intergenerational collaborations with faculty. Not surprisingly, students played important
roles in these projects.

As I mentioned previously, over half of the participants spoke about the role and
impact that undergraduates had (or were continuing to have) on their research in general,
and on their collaborative projects with faculty more specifically. Not surprisingly, there
was diversity among the participant reports of the advantages and challenges of
undergraduate student involvement. Faculty reported that having students involved in
their research teams provided excitement and rejuvenation for them vis-a-vis their work.

Hank, a Professor in a natural science department at College B described how
student involvement helped prevent his work from becoming boring or routine:

Now I have new students all the time. It’s new to them and they’re having a great

time, and that always helps keep me going every summer. But then, all of a

sudden, to have a new angle on it [the perspective of his junior collaborator in

another discipline] at the same time has been pretty exciting. I got some new toys,
I thought about a lot of new stuff.

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Not only do students keep things “fresh” for faculty, they serve as crucial human
resources that enable research to get done. Hank emphasized, “We [need] the students to
do the work and do it well.” Parker described a similar experience when he stated:

They’ve [students] done hard work of the data analysis with my supervision. So

what you do is make an image of the sky and from that image you want to

extract the intensity of the sources. They’ve [students] been doing the imaging
and the source extraction and putting together tables of data. They’ve done some
writing of the paper.

Furthermore, Parker talked about the time that his collaborative partner, an
Assistant Professor at a research institution, “did a rough job Of the data analysis,” and
Parker “wasn’t too happy” with that so he had his “. .. summer students re-do it.”

Tiffany, an Assistant Professor in a physical science unit at College B, spoke of
changing the physical location of her data collection from very remote areas to more local
sites. Tiffany made this decision, in part, to be able to include students in her research:

The other reality is that those [environmental sites] are not the easiest to [bring a

student to], and that’s ...an expected component of doing science research here at

College B is that you incorporate and include students in the research that you do.

And they’re sort of oozing money in terms of wanting to give you money and

give students money to do it.

Wanda, a professor in a social science department at College C, hopes to involve
students in her research in the future, but is trying to figure out how to do that in her sub-
field which is less experimentally based, as compared to fields in the natural and physical
sciences that have a longer tradition of undergraduate involvement in faculty research.

Hannah, an Assistant Professor in a social science unit at College D, talked about
her experience interviewing for her job and questioning her future department chair about

how faculty get research done without the benefit of graduate students. The department

chair told her that the students at College D were “extraordinary,” and Hannah decided to

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give the opportunity a chance. One of the favorite parts of Hannah’s role as teacher has
become teaching undergraduates how to do research in a lab setting: “You know, I like
teaching and like research. I like doing these with students. I like introducing students
who know nothing about research to the world of research and then the child
development.” The participants in this study made the important role Of undergraduate
students in faculty research at a liberal arts college very clear.
Issue of Critical Mass — Increased Chance of Faculty Isolation

Faculty members at any type of institution, large or small, can feel isolated.
Faculty can feel alone in the workplace along such dimensions such as disciplinary
subspecialty, ethnic identity, gender, or parental status. However, for a faculty member
working at a liberal arts college, the chances of experiencing isolation among these
dimensions is increased due to the lack Of critical mass of faculty in their own
departments, as well as their specializations. As a result, a faculty member may feel
“apart” or at distance from their colleagues on any of the aforementioned dimensions.

In this study, several faculty found themselves being the only faculty member
with a certain subspecialty within their departments. One faculty member in this study
utilized his intergenerational research collaboration to develop a connection with the
broader intellectual conversations going on within his sub-specialty. Doc, an Associate
Professor at College H, emphasized how engaging in such collaborations with senior
colleagues exposed him to networks of scholars and ideas in his sub-discipline that he
otherwise would not have come into contact with:

[My collaborator] had a lot of experience and a lot of ideas and connection to that

field. As we wrote grants he was able to bring in a lot of ideas that I didn’t

have access to he’s read all the papers and been to those meetings and the
big networks. So he’s very well connected.

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Tiffany, an Assistant Professor, mentioned this isolation as something that hadn’t been
alleviated for her. Although very content in her interdisciplinary collaboration, with both
her colleague and the work they do, Tiffany says that she does not have anyone to go to
about intellectual problems in her sub-discipline:

I don’t have an intellectual mentor here there’s not somebody I go to with

burning questions. I think part of it is that my approach is so different from my

colleagues [in my department, as well as], the schooling I had and the things that
are intriguing to me.
Tiffany added that a professor at a public research institution on the west coast, a friend
from graduate school, is the same age as she is but has become much more advanced in
the field. He is someone whom she can go to for questions in her area of sub disciplinary-
expertise: “I know that he knows a lot more about say [topic] than I do, and he — I would
absolutely ask him questions.”

It is widely known that in many disciplinary areas, especially in STEM fields,
women are significantly under-represented. Therefore, it wasn’t a surprise when Hank,
Professor and former provost at College C, expressed concern that Tiffany, was going to
be both the only and the first woman in her physical science department at College C.

I was worried a little, as Provost, her coming in because she was to be the only

woman in [her physical science department]. It's a small department. But the

first woman ever in the department, the only woman in the department and
was probably at that time the only department on campus that didn't have any
women in it so [it] can be sort of a guy thing though there are plenty of
women students down there and there have never been any problems yeah, it
was something in the back of my mind that she might want to know somebody
outside the department.

Hank went on to collaborate with Tiffany, and introduced her to other women in his

natural science department. Tiffany said she felt isolated, not just in terms of gender, but

age, and intellectual generation in her department:

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There are three other full-time, all tenured men who are all in their mid-40's
They are all [scientists in her physical science field] in the very traditional sense
of the word. And they're a decade older than I am and they're all men
and they - two of the three of them have children. But - well, my own personal
opinion is that the women just bear the brunt of the child-rearing experience,

even if you're working full-time. .. their background is much more [old style
physical science field] I'm more an earth scientist because I don't really do [old
style physical science field] stuff And that became apparent pretty quickly
when I arrived that my approach and the kinds of things that I do are very
different from what they do.

I then asked Tiffany if she believed she was brought in partly diversify that department.
She responded:
Absolutely! And yet at the same time, I think they still have trouble kind of
accommodating my my needs you know, for example, our lab manager
his job is to deal with the equipment and to teach some labs, and that's great,
except that I don't really use much equipment. I need help on field trips The
kinds of things that I need help with are not the same as the system's kind of been
set up to do So it's sort of - it's one of those things that I feel like I'm
constantly battling to try to get it so that it accommodates me, too.
Overall, Tiffany is satisfied with her position at College B. She is obviously brilliant
intellectually, as well as a very positive person. Nevertheless, Tiffany’s story of being
“only one” along the dimensions of gender, age, and scientific specialty, vividly
demonstrated that, although this problem is not limited to smaller institutions, that
individuals at small institutions who are different in any way may be more prone to
feelings of isolation and disconnection at these institutions.
When Research Gets Done
Another theme that emerged from interviews was the reality that the summer
months and sabbaticals were the primary times when faculty at these colleges could focus

solely on their scholarship. The teaching loads at these institutions, although not as high

as at other liberal arts colleges, involve teaching two or three courses per semester. As a

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result, these faculty have very full schedules in the fall and spring semesters. Doc’s
description of his schedule on the week of our visit exemplifies this pace that leaves little

time for research:

I’m teaching two lectures, so I have responsibility over two lectures and a lab, and
it’s the same class that’s a typical load so basically what I say is from
September tO May, I essentially can’t do anything. I can carve out some time to
go to a conference. It turns out this semester, Thursday [today] afternoon from
about 1:00 to 5:00 I can get in the lab so I’m thinking one thing that I have to
do that literally takes half an hour and I have this, which is totally fine. I’m
meeting with some students. I’m trying to find when is that half hour going to be
[available]. That’s sort Of it. Progress is much slower because essentially nothing
can happen during the academic year except I’m writing some papers with some
collaborators and I can write a couple sentences or a couple paragraphs what I
say to the students and other colleagues is that [in] May as soon as the honors
exams are done, I take off my professor hat and put on a research hat. Then I’m
focused until September I", and then it switches back again...

Another reality forcing faculty to engage in research during the summer is the
large number of students available to work on research projects during the vacation
period. At many of the institutions I visited, a large pot of money existed in the form of
grants for summer undergraduate research positions.

Doolittle, a director of an interdisciplinary NSF grant at College A, also
mentioned the important role that summer months played in helping he and his
colleagues get research done:

My role as the PI is to make sure that there is some interaction between the

faculty... we don’t do a whole lot during the academic year, just because Of the

nature of this institution. We’re really busy teaching as summer approaches,
we start having group meetings the faculty get together and we talk about what

we’re gonna do that summer, what students are involved, how projects could
interact with one another.

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Hank consistently talked about the additional “push” his research gets in the summer: “I
have new students all the time. It’s new to them and they’re having a great time, and that
always helps keeping me going every summer.”

In addition to getting scholarship done during the summer months, the faculty at
many of the colleges I visited had taken advantage of pre- and post-tenure sabbaticals to
work on research. More than half of the Colleges I visited had some form of pre-tenure

sabbatical leave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 5.1 Pre-tenure sabbatical leave policies
Pre-Tenure Sabbatical Leave Policies

College A no

College B no

College C yes

College D yes

College E Information not available
College F yes

College G yes

College H yes

College I yes

College J yes

 

 

 

 

Doc asserted that his college (College H) had one Of the most research-intensive
missions of any liberal arts college, reflected in many aspects of college policies,
including the college’s “very liberal leave policy where we take one year off every
four. . .50 three years on, one year off, three years on, one year off.” Spike, another faculty
member at College H, talked about his sabbaticals as being crucial to not only giving him
the time to engage in an intergenerational research project for one semester of his
sabbatical, but to also provide him with some space and time to decide whether or not he
wanted to stay in academe by trying out some additional venues in which he could

engage in research:

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The first semester [of my sabbatical], I actually worked at a pharmaceutical
company... And it's because I was pretty unhappy here during my first two
years, and I was very close to leaving and I was exploring options
And so I thought about going to this pharmaceutical company.
Therefore, it became apparent that although faculty perceived drawbacks to not being
able to engage as deeply in research during the academic year as they might like, they
recognized that other structures were put in place to help them succeed from a scholarly
standpoint.
Perceptions of Others
Among three of the physical scientists in my sample, I heard stories about biases
that they believe some of their disciplinary colleagues have against faculty like
themselves at research-oriented liberal arts colleges. Parker, a very senior and respected
scholar in his field, was particularly concerned about this bias:
The expectation at the research universities is that people from liberal arts
colleges are the junior member of the collaboration or that they're desperate for
research opportunities and the only way they can get them is to collaborate with
some other university guys NSF for instance has a program of pairing people
from small colleges with people at research institutions. But if you read it, it's
assumed that the research opportunity, the teaching, the real expertise is all at the
research university We people at liberal arts colleges have a chip on our
shoulder because the research universities so often dismiss the quality of the
faculty or the research done at places like this.
These institutionalized structures in the funding system do not help him as he is a very
senior member in the field:
I tend to be the senior member of the collaboration. In fact, I wrote down
preparing for this meeting the number of people who I regard as senior to me with
whom I've collaborated All are at absolutely first class research institutions but
there are three of them. And I've gone back 10 or 15 years. So I'm doing
something that's not standard.

Doc, a mid-career faculty member who spoke of his collaborations with senior

colleagues, talked about similar frustrations:

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The natural thing is that [College H] isn't University of Chicago or Princeton, and

we - me, I'm a minor player, both monetarily and so I have a small voice. So

sometimes saying, "We're over here, we're doing this stuff with these other type

of - and we're doing all this other big stuff," but I think that's to be expected.

We're certainly smaller players than all the rest of them.
Saleem, an Assistant Professor at College A in a natural sciences department shared her
belief that her lack of an academic mentor in the field since she had arrived at College A
was caused, in part, by how her Research I (from post-doc, grad school) colleagues made
sense of her choice to go to a research-oriented liberal arts institution:

SO I haven't had an academic mentor since because I also chose to come to a

small institution, which was not frowned upon, but sort of just accepted that I

wouldn't be looking for some advice as if I'd gone to a Research I institution. For

example, I haven't had conversations with my graduate school mentors about life.

Concluding Remarks — Contextual Factors

In the earliest paragraphs of this section, I said that there were attributes of the
context of research-oriented liberal arts colleges that impacted faculty experiences of
their intergenerational research collaborations. Contextual factors, many of which marked
the unique nature of a research-oriented liberal arts college, included: heavy student
involvement in research, a lack of critical mass of faculty in some departments, limited
periods of time available to get research accomplished, and structural biases built into
disciplinary funding structures.

Undergraduate students played a significant role on intergenerational research
teams. According to study participants, students kept things “fresh” for faculty, and
brought technical expertise to the research teams. Students were able to contribute

advanced computer skills to projects. The availability of undergraduate students also

determined, in some cases, when research was carried out during the year. The quality of

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undergraduates at these institutions was very high, and they made significant
contributions to scholarly work being undertaken by faculty participants in this study.

Another contextual factor mentioned by participants in this study was the fact that
at research-oriented liberal arts colleges, faculty sometimes found themselves being the
“only one” on dimensions such as gender, age, or sub-disciplinary specialty. This
potential isolation, in many cases, resulted from the lack of critical mass of faculty in
certain departments at these institutions.

The limited time periods during which faculty were able to engage in research
was a notable characteristic of the research-oriented liberal arts context. The biggest
blocks of time that faculty had to engage in work that was part of the intergenerational
research collaboration was during pre- and post-tenure sabbatical periods, as well as
during the summer months. Teaching loads were reduced during the summer, and a large
volume of students was available for research.

Finally, a few physical science faculty discussed their frustration about the
systemic bias in how funding priorities and requests for proposals were designed by the
federal government. This bias, according to these faculty, presumed that a liberal arts
college faculty member on a large research grant would be in a more junior, rather than
more senior role.

Therefore, some organizational structures, policies, and cultural norms that exist
at research-oriented liberal arts colleges that impact how, when, and where both junior
and senior collaborators engage in their research together. In the next section, I present
data collected that revealed something about key features of the collaborative process

impacted the experience of the faculty involved.

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Collaborative Processes

The purpose Of this study was to create the richest picture possible of the
experience of faculty members at a research-oriented liberal arts colleges who were
involved in intergenerational research collaborations. After reading this section, the
reader will understand the keyfeatures of the collaborative processes that formed the
basis of these partnerships. The questions that will be addressed in this section include:

1. How did these collaborations begin?
2. What were key features of the interactions that challenged or hindered success
in these relationships?
3. What were the elements of the interactions that facilitated these relationships?
4. Did collaborative partners hold unique roles or responsibilities?
How did these collaborations begin?

Of the forty collaborations discussed by participants, over thirty percent
developed after a senior colleague asked a junior colleague to join him or her in joint
work. Participants reported that another third (twelve Of twenty-six) of the partnerships
evolved out of a series of conversations, or after a serendipitous connection between
partners. Third, over twenty percent of collaborations began as a result of a junior
colleague asking a senior colleague to collaborate. Finally, ten percent of the
collaborations resulted from a third party (e. g. a student) bringing the colleagues together.
In the next several paragraphs, I will provide evidence from the text of the interviews

about how these collaborations got started.

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Senior Colleague Approaches Junior Colleague to Collaborate
The respondents told me about fifteen collaborations that started when a senior
partner asked a junior partner to work with him or her. Parker, a professor of a physical
science discipline at College I, talked about how he initiated several collaborations with
junior faculty and post-doctoral scholars at a nearby Ivy League institution. He provided
one example:
I believe I was up giving a talk at [Ivy League University] and we got to talking
informally and I was looking for someone whose computer skills were better than
mine. And someone who had the energy and the time to devote to this project. SO
it grew out of that.
Larry, a chairperson and professor of a social science unit at College B, talked about
asking an Assistant Professor in his department to work with him on a research project in
the local community:
Yeah, they [a community organization] called me and I asked [junior colleague]
because I know her skills real well and they don’t duplicate mine. So it was kind
of the classic — since I’m well known in the community, they came to me and then
I just found somebody who could really do the research in the way that I’d like to
have it done.
Anachem, Saleem, and Doc, each of whom described their experience as junior members
Of research collaborations, explained that their senior colleagues initiated their working
relationship. Doc, a 48-year Old Associate Professor in a physical science discipline at
College H, talked about how his senior partner initiated the relationship because it would
enable him (Doc’s senior colleague) to do research that he wasn’t able to do at his
government-run company:
Well, he approached me we’ve been in the same kind of subgroup [in the
discipline] and he works at [company name] his experience was [working]
on a small scale, [playing with] kind of nutty ideas, kind of like what I do here.

He liked what I was doing here and approached me to see if he could collaborate
[with me]. I guess as I think about it, being at [company name] he had some

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other ideas that couldn’t be implemented there. So he wanted to see if I’d. be
interested .

Both Saleem and Anachem (in separate interviews; neither knew the other was
participating) told me that Doolittle asked them to work on a large government grant.
Anachem described that, when he was a pre-tenure, Assistant Professor, Doolittle asked
“if I would consider working on a project with him.” Anachem went on to describe that
Doolittle “was basically wanting me to do some analysis for him on [a plant] that had
been infected with a certain [disease]” and that he “came to me because he did not have
the expertise in doing the analysis, and we had all of the equipment.”

In each Of these examples, a senior colleague asked a junior colleague to join a
collaboration, in part, because the junior person had complementary skills that would
benefit their research. In another case, a senior colleague outside of academe approached
Doc, an Associate Professor at College H, because the senior colleague wanted to find a
venue to experiment with ideas that he was not able to explore within the context of his
work in a corporate setting.

Series of Discussions or Serendipitous Events

About one-third Of the collaborations that the participants described began as a
result of a series of conversations over time. The collaboration between Cassandra and
Gary, both at College B, illustrates such a process. Cassandra and Gary collaborated on a
book, years after they had started working together in a variety of pedagogical contexts:

Early on we were involved in some campus workshops together. . .we had been

assigned a J-term course and both [Gary] and I participated in that, and we

both had long-term interests teaching across levels we got to talking and

thought it would be really interesting to team [teach] a first-year course and
[combine a] first-year course with a mid-level course.

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Gary and Cassandra’s collaborative teaching endeavor evolved into a writing project:
After several years of joint teaching — a new course - students named [title of
future book]. And then we taught it a number Of times under that title one Of
[Gary’s] colleagues in [social science department] that’s working on a book on
the use of narrative in [social science discipline], and he asked if we would
consider writing a chapter on [social science topic] we wrote a number of
articles together and then started to think about a book. We had a sabbatical that
coincided. . .and during that time we continued to write articles but really started
to look at — well, what we were running into was that you couldn’t fit it in an
article anymore.

In addition to Cassandra and Gary, two other Assistant Professors in the study
recalled that conversations with senior colleagues about potential collaborations began
during their interview processes for their current jobs. Andrew, an Assistant Professor of
humanities in College A, said he resonated “immediately” with his senior colleague and
explained that the conversation about a possible collaboration may have started during his
interview: “That’s a good question [“How did this collaboration begin?”] I mean, like I
said, I think even from the beginning conversation at the interview.” Tiffany, an Assistant
Professor in a physical science department at College B, specifically remembered the
beginning of the conversation with the natural sciences professor who was provost when
she interviewed for the job:

When I interviewed he was the Provost I actually had been doing a post-

doc [on a topic that was complementary to the Provost’s work in a different

discipline] I must’ve started talking to him about it during my interview.

Tiffany’s senior collaborator, Hank, the former Provost and a current program director at

College B, also identified the interview as an important moment for the collaboration:

“SO I didn’t hire her because we could collaborate, but we certainly had a lot of good

discussions during the hiring piece. And so we got to talking ”

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Junior Colleague Approaches Senior Colleague to Collaborate
Eight of the participants described their experiences in collaborations where the
junior member of a collaboration approached a senior colleague to work with him or her
on a project. Several examples of these collaborations follow. Mambi, an Associate
Professor in a social science discipline at College B, asked his senior colleague Larry
(also in this study), to develop a reader with him:
I use a lot of readings in my courses There weren’t good readers out there
And, I think I knew that I couldn’t do it on my own because geography is such a
broad discipline.
Larry also recalled that Mambi initiated their work together:
This was his idea rather than mine. [Mambi] and I teach the same course a
colleague and I did a reader back in the 19705 [Mambi] thought we should do a
reader [Mambi] thought in order to get a reader published, we needed a team.
In another example, Tim, an Assistant Professor facile with statistics, told me how
he reached out to faculty at a professional school within College A upon his arrival on
campus during his first year. Although this initial overture didn’t immediately result in a
partnership, it paved the way for a project with another faculty member in the department
one year later:
I had actually approached the folks in the nursing department about a different
option for a study shortly after I was here a couple years ago. There wasn't
interest or the time wasn't right on their end for that, and I think ultimately that
was a good decision, I was fine with that. But this woman, [collaborator name],
came back to me that and said, "Hey, I've got this other project. I'm looking to
have a collaborator with this. I'm used to working in collaborative research
situations". .. she pitched the idea to me, and I said, "Yeah, that sounds great.
Sounds something I'd like to do."
Although only representing 22% of all of the collaborations discussed, significant

scholarly results were produced by the participants in collaborations that started when the

junior person initiated the working relationship.

ll7

Third Party

In three of the collaborations discussed by participants, their collaborations with
faculty members of different generations got started when a third party introduced the
faculty. One of the study participants, Clara, an Assistant Professor at College B,
specifically recalls how one of her students, working on her senior thesis, brokered a
connection with her collaborative partner:

I actually originally got involved with him because of a student here that was

working on her senior thesis [the student] found this group at [nearby

institution] that was doing something she was interested in and started working
with them and set up a meeting for all of us to get together. So I went and
heard about the project and then I started talking [to the senior partner] and
we realized that we had a lot of common interests ...and [we] talked about
collaboration.
In another case, an eminent scientist asked Barry if he would consider working with an
advisee of his:

This person [Barry’s collaborator] was a post-doc at Princeton when his

advisor came to me and he and his post-doc had written this paper that

predicted some effect and he also knew that I was interested in [topic]...he
wanted to know if from the data I had access to if we could detect the effect. And
he was always doing other things but it was primarily his post-doc and 1. Again,
he's a high-level theorist and his post-doc is a theorist but he - it was mostly the
post-doc and I that were doing this work and he had done all these calculations

with his mentor and then we did some pretty hard core data analysis and I

learned a little bit from him these were just involved calculations.

Finally, Gareth said that a colleague of similar rank and age encouraged him and
some junior colleagues to write an article based upon a summer institute for teachers that
they had worked on together.

Over the last several pages I discussed collaborative processes that faculty went

through as they participated in intergenerational research collaborations. In this section, I

showed how the participants in this study revealed that there is no “right way” to get

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involved in one of these relationships. In the next section, I will highlight some of the
challenges that participants faced during work with their colleagues.
Challenges

All collaborations involve challenges. Intergenerational research collaborations
are no exception. The most common challenge faced by faculty in this study was the
issue of time. This time pressure was most Often revealed by participants discussing how
other professional responsibilities and family commitments impacted their experiences in
these partnerships.

Professional Responsibilities Outside of Collaboration

Almost half of the participants holding a more junior role (46 percent) in one of
these collaborations reported how the number of professional commitments for which
they were responsible made it hard to commit time to their intergenerational research
collaborations. Of those with experience in a more senior role, twenty-five percent
mentioned the stress that came from other professional commitments.

During my interview with Andrew, an Assistant Professor in a humanities
department in College A, he pointed to a wipe-off board behind his desk that had three
columns with multiple “to-do” items listed in each column. He was very aware of the
multiple pressures to get things done, and said that this ongoing pressure impacted the
amount Of time he had to devote to his collaboration with his senior colleague. Andrew
said that for the most part, “it doesn’t overwhelm me” but also adds that “my wife would
say, this past week, I was very overwhelmed, just the number of different things. They’re
not all consuming, but together they are.” Shortly after he made these comments, Andrew

went on to talk a little bit more about his professional commitments and pointed to his

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wipe-Off board: “You have them right here [points to board]...I have them written up and
this is my reminder. . Andrew goes on to tell me about each project and says, “So you
get a sense that none of those are overwhelming but there’s a lot to keep track Of;
really it’s the keeping track of it that’s hard.” Fortunately for Andrew, his senior
collaborator has been “very, very laid back” about the limited time he was able to put into
the earliest stages of their joint project.

Similarly, three senior faculty members at two participating institutions expressed
a “wish” that their junior colleagues were more available to work on their joint projects,
but understood the great pressures that come with being pre-tenure faculty members.
Parker, referring to several experiences in the past with collaborators more junior than he,
Observed:

I guess an impression I've had is the degree to which young faculty

members' time is soaked up by their institutions. And perhaps because I'm at a

different institution what happens is that this joint research tends to

languish.
Parker continued by saying:

They have other things that they're trying to do -- setting up [labs], writing

lectures and so on. So there have been a couple of other experiences that haven't

moved along as quickly as I would like.
Hank, a Professor and program director at College B, also wished his collaborator would
be more available to him, and the collaborative project on which they were working
together. But at the same time, he recognized that she needed to be attending to other
projects besides the one they were working on together:

I'm completely focused on this project. And [Tiffany’s] also doing another

project in addition to this one. So there are times when I want her to be here,

or I want to grab her for something when she's not available 'cause she's doing

another project I should be saying yes, she needs to do that. She needs to
finish that up. She needs to get the publications out.

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Junior faculty are not the only ones who see competing commitments as limiting
their ability to work at the pace they would like within their collaborations. A senior
faculty member at College C expressed how the high teaching load at a research-oriented
liberal arts college made it very hard, at times, to get things done during certain times of
year. Wanda stated plainly:

I'd say the main [challenges] had nothing to do with the fact that we had any
conflicts or anything like that, but since we were both in the same institution on
the same schedule, we had big periods of time where we couldn't get anything
done doing research in a liberal arts environment generally, but the fact

that we were both in the same, exact, schedule, and we were coping with the
same work - different committee assignments and stuff.

Wanda went on to explain that she and her junior colleague dealt with this challenge
quite well:

And so, sometimes, one or the other of us would say, "God, I'm going to stay up
all night and do this," and then we would bring [the paper] to the other

person's desk, and then that would be like, "Oh, my, God, now it's my turn." In
some ways, that was really good, and as [my collaborator] said, "You really kept
me going, [Wanda], because this would never have gotten to where it was if you
hadn't stayed up and done the next thing, put in subheadings and reorganized it
and stuff like that.”

Gary, now a professor emeritus at College B, recognized how busy his junior colleague
was at the time they were writing papers that eventually led to a joint book together, but
also noted the multiple pressures he faced during that time as well:
I was still chair of [his department] when we started doing it and I was very
active in campus politics and chairs of [committees] there were distractions
I was on the editorial board of American Journal of [his discipline] the
deadlines start popping up I'd let everything go to the deadline I thought I

should never let on to my students who might have said, "Do not write the paper
the night before"... And I'm sitting there looking at the clock.

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Hannah and Clara, two junior faculty in this study, talked about the time pressures
that result from a collaborative partner being at a different institution. Hannah
commented on this time pressure in the context of her collaboration with a clinical
professor at an Ivy League institution:

Whenever you're writing papers or grants, it needs to be done like yesterday and

so when the email comes on Saturday and "its here's this version and please give

it a go I added five more things they're highlighted. Can you please blah, blah,

blah"... that can be a little overwhelming depending on where you are in your

academic calendar. Like if you're trying to grade exams or prepare a lecture, you
know.

Clara discussed the challenge of being on a different academic schedule than her
coHeague:

I guess one of the challenges that I'm facing right now is that we're on
somewhat different schedules for me the school year has now started, and
because of our teaching and advising load, I can't do a lot of research and take
a huge part in some of the projects we're doing now. He's not part of that
system, so he's kind of the full—steam go ahead. So that to me is a challenge I
think I have a student now who's gonna work with them and still maintain it that
way. But that's been kind of the challenging part for me, is how to balance and
keep that going.
The junior faculty in this study clearly expressed the tension they felt juggling the many
responsibilities in their professional lives.
Issues with Undergraduate Students
As was discussed previously, students played a significant, positive role on the
intergenerational research teams. However, several of the challenges articulated by
faculty I interviewed revolved around issues with undergraduate students working with

them -- six of the twenty-six respondents mentioned challenges that involved

undergraduates.

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The student issues raised were quite variable. For example, Anachem spoke of a
challenge that many faculty members at all institutional types probably face — getting
new students in the lab up to speed on the content and processes of the research project:

I would say the biggest challenge when that student comes in, that student has

to be brought up to speed with everything that has occurred the other thing is

that it was also because we also started to branch out on our own, and so in
addition to kind of working together, we started, well, let's see if we can look

at this specific area right here, and so getting the students to think about this but

then getting them, the students, to think about the entire project, it was

challenging.

Clara said she also struggled to get new students up to speed on the research projects:

But that's been hard, and then they only want to do it for a semester or
summer, or maybe a year at most. SO it's hard to kind of keep finding them.

Mambi, another junior participant, talked about how a student he assigned to work on the
reader he was producing with his collaborator did not “mesh” well with his senior
colleague, Larry. Both Mambi and Larry recalled this issue as one of the few challenges
they faced in their otherwise fruitful collaboration. Mambi recalled:
The roughest patch, if it was a rough patch, was once I was gone for three
months doing research in Africa. So he [Larry] was here by himself in the
summer we hired a student to help us, who was a student of mine who I had a
lot of respect for. But that student and [Larry] - it turns out - probably didn't get
along that well so her job was to plow through the literature and find good
reading. She was finding a lot of stuff that he didn't like (laughter) a lot of
her choices were probably influenced by me. So I came back and it was
clear that that hadn't worked super well. And I was getting emails here and there.
Larry also remembered this challenge. He started talking about this by saying, “So he
[Mambi] went off to Africa and left me in the summer with the research [assistant].”
Larry then laughed. Several moments later, I asked: “A few minutes ago, you chuckled

when you were talking about when you got left with part of the project what was that

chuckle about?” This prodded Larry to talk about his experience working with Mambi’s

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student — he saw it as a relatively minor event, even as a bit funny in the ‘big picture’ of
their work:
[Mambi] has a protégé [a] brilliant young woman who transferred here, got
hooked on [Mambi’s] concepts I really like her a lot, but she's way too serious
and speaks so softly and - and it was such a chuckle because she didn't like to
read the things I was interested in and so I had to read this other stuff. She
[shared] [Mambi]'s notion of, "Well, let's go out and help the poor
downtrodden...” and I'm over here thinking, "Let's get involved [with the
business community]” so it was kind of a funny thing because while
[Mambi]'s off gallivanting around in Africa having a great time, and I'm kind of
keeping her moving and prodding her and she's getting bored with these articles...
So she's doing her stuff and I wanted to do my stuff. And we'd go back and forth
with that. Then she's falling asleep reading the things that I want her to read. I
was - it was fine. Itjust was funny.
Despite the tremendous benefit undergraduate students bring to faculty research teams at
research-oriented liberal arts colleges, some participants recognized the extra work that
having students on their team brought them.
Other Challenges
In addition to the challenges of balancing professional responsibilities and dealing
with student issues, participants talked about some additional challenges, but these
challenges were often only mentioned by one or two faculty members. These additional
challenges included: (a) significant geographical distance between collaborators; (b) the
intellectual content of the collaborative project was politically controversial at the
institution where the collaborator worked; (c) a faculty partner decided to leave a
collaboration to pursue financial support for other projects because research funding for
the topic of their joint endeavor was becoming increasingly competitive; (d) a faculty
member did not enjoy group work; (e) lack of trust existed between collaborators; and (t)

junior faculty risked their work as being too closely associated with his or her

collaborator’s scholarship.

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In this chapter so far, I have discussed two aspects of collaborative processes
occurring in intergenerational research collaborations — strategies for starting the work
together and challenges faced during the joint work. Next, I will report factors that
participants saw as contributing positively to their intergenerational research
collaboration with colleagues.

Facilitating Factors

What factors contributed to the effectiveness of these collaborations, from the
point of view of the collaborative partners? Facilitating factors that I will discuss here
include funding (from both the colleges and from governmental and private sources), the
intellectual capital of faculty and students, and solid personal relationships between the
collaborative partners. It is important to note that many attributes of the individuals in
this study, as well as contextual dimensions of research-oriented liberal arts colleges, all
have the capacity to facilitate the success of these collaborations. The role of these factors
will be discussed in separate sections of this chapter.

Funding

The majority of the research-oriented liberal arts colleges in this study have
generous sabbatical policies that include pre-tenure as well as post-tenure leaves. Five
participants in this study specifically mentioned that they engaged in intergenerational
research collaborations during sabbaticals. Barry discussed two collaborations that he
engaged in during a post-tenure sabbatical leave in the mid-19905. Cassandra and Gary
(separately) talked about coinciding sabbaticals they had, during which they were able to
plan for and write their co-authored book. Spike talked about two intergenerational

collaborations that he was involved with during both a pre-tenure, as well as post-tenure,

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sabbatical. Finally Tim recognized the benefit of having his senior partner on sabbatical
at the time of our conversation, as that was the time that the pair was writing a grant for
federal funding. Twenty-one of the twenty-six (80%) participants discussed
intergenerational research projects in which they participated that were funded by either
the National Science Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Mellon
Foundation, the Lilly Foundation or the Pew Foundation. Therefore, funding from
internal and external sources provided sabbatical pay, course buy-outs, and money to
purchase equipment for the intergenerational research collaborations within which the
participants were involved.
Human Resources

The education and professional backgrounds of the faculty in this study (see Table
4.2), in addition to the excellent preparation and ability of the students at these research-
oriented liberal arts colleges, were reported as strong assets to these intergenerational
research collaborations. Hannah told me about how her concern of coming to College D
and having no graduate students or post-docs was alleviated quickly when she
experienced the quality of the students:

[The department chair] said, "There were no grad students" and I was like, "Well,

how do people do research"? "You know, we have amazing students" I

like my undergrads more than my grad students [in her post-doc institution] and I

was like, "Okay" and the fact [is] that these students are extraordinary .
Although I alluded to challenges that sometimes arise with students on research teams

earlier in this chapter, overall, the students in these collaborations made important, and

positive contributions to the projects.

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Interpersonal Relations

Twenty-five percent of the participants in this study reported how positive
feelings towards their collaborator helped the collaboration move forward, and enhanced
the quality of their faculty work life in general. Participants discussed positive feelings
they had vis-a-vis their collaborators, including: (a) fond memories from certain
“moments” they shared with their colleagues during their research together; (b) feelings
of deep personal connection with and support from their partners; (c) pride and
admiration for their collaborator; and (d) feeling of self-worth as a result of feeling
affirmed and cared for by their colleagues. Although the depth of these personal feelings
varied from person to person, the mere existence of these emotions seemed to facilitate
productive professional relationships.

Ruby discussed the fun she had with her senior colleague when they were out in
the field together gathering data for their work together:

Going out on field trips, and realizing this is like a neat person who is really

interested, and it would be neat to work with him. We’ve had a lot of personal

inter-relational moments — we’ve spent a lot of time together. And I still feel like

every summer that we spend time together, I develop some sort of new

[appreciation]. I’m so glad we’re doing [the work].

Ruby had a hard time coming up with specific moments, but recalled a time she
and her collaborator spent together during one of their summer field outings:

The first summer that we were actually out in kayaks, which I think was the third

summer we were working together. And we could have done everything we could

do on foot and by car. And we were out, and we were just sort of paddling around

and looking at stuff that [senior collaborator] hadn’t necessarily seen before we

were like the only people on this tiny little island that was just all juniper berries

and cute little pine trees in the middle and I remember just standing there
and being like, “thank god I’m doing this.”

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Andrew felt a deep personal connection with his senior collaborator in the first
moments they met:
I think from the very first interview and thinking about taking this job, he was
there and the head of the department was there, and I felt like I resonated with
him immediately [so he was] somebody that I thought I would love to work
[with]. I’d love to learn from him.
Andrew went on to say that he enjoyed discussing issues of faith and family with his
senior colleague.
Hank, a senior collaborator at College B, demonstrated the respect and pride he
felt for his junior collaborator who initially got what Hank called “a slow start”:
[Junior Collaborator Name] just knows everything. I mean she’s phenomenal
in what she knows in fact we just got an email today that one of her articles
just came out in Science News.
Spike, a collaborator in a junior role, felt cared for by a senior collaborator from a
research institution on the west coast that Spike had the opportunity to work with during
a pre-tenure sabbatical. Spike felt this care from the first day he arrived on the west coast:
I remember when I first arrived, he picked me up at the airport, and immediately
sort of took me to the grocery store to get some basics, and then he just took me to
the house where I was going to live so I do remember from the very beginning
how welcoming he was .
Julia demonstrated her admiration for her collaborator who had recently gone on
to retire:
And he's [her collaborator] an amazing musician; he plays the banjo and and
piano. He plays all by ear and, 50, something in the back of my mind is, he
keeps telling me, like, "I gotta have a hobby"; and I don't have a hobby
[Laughter]. I don't have time to breathe. . .How can I have a hobby? But, you
know, just looking at - and how he's retiring gracefully. . .I'm into the learning
lessons from elders. I think just that has always made sense to me.

Finally, participants also said that their research collaborators supported them

personally, and were people they could trust. Spike, currently department chair and

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Associate Professor of a physical science unit at College H, spoke eloquently how his
self-esteem was raised after the two sabbaticals during which he participated in
intergenerational collaborations:

There’s no question working with [senior collaborator] helped develop my

self-confidence and sense of being an accomplished and deserving member

of the academy, which is a sense [that] after three years of being here had
gotten beaten up a bit the collaboration helped build that up.
Spike went on to add that. “In some sense it's the opportunity for affirmation by
somebody who I have a high opinion of [cross talk] who views me as somebody who is
good at what I do.”

Wanda, a Professor at College C, talked about how herjunior partner, a recently
tenured Associate Professor in her department, was an important source of personal
support. She described several instances in which they were able to trust each other with
personal information.

We have gotten to know each other really well, partly because we did this, but

partly because we’ve been interviewing for the past three years together and so

on. . .I had a particular trouble with one colleague, and I got sick over it. I lost like

15 pounds ...but it was really and I think ...our coming together on this project

meant that, I felt comfortable when Nathan was in my office. . .and he handled it

wonderfully.
Wanda went on to add that “in turn, he had they’ve had some family issues, and he
shared those with me.”

Upon reading that only 25% of the faculty reported positive feelings towards their
collaborators, one might think that this is a smaller percentage than would be expected.

There is no support for the assertion that given the percentage above, 75% of the faculty

have negative feelings towards their collaborators. However, one can conclude that 75%

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of the faculty, for whatever reason (e.g., comfort level discussing personal feelings about
another), chose not to speak of this dimension of their relationships.

In this section so far, I have presented the data that revealed how the participants
described their collaborations as getting started, challenges faced by collaborators, and
factors that facilitated the collaborative processes. The final dimension of the
collaborative process that I will highlight involves the different roles participants and
their collaborators assumed, and how labor was divided between the partners.

Roles and Division of Labor

Participants described a variety of dimensions upon which labor was divided in
their collaborations. Some faculty talked about the roles each partner held in writing
tasks, managing communications with publishers, and providing disciplinary expertise.
Some respondents provided examples of collaborations in which the division of labor was
clear. Gareth, a senior scientist, talked about the clearly defined roles between him and
his junior colleague:

I had never worked on [type of worm] before so the sort of technical

expertise associated with working on [type of worm] was [junior collaborator’s

role] I was the one who was pushing the significance of a particular idea and
hints of a particular set of observations.
Ellen, a senior humanities scholar, described the different roles that she and her junior
colleague from a social science discipline held:

It was really, one of my main jobs was to tell the story and then [junior

collaborator] did the initial drafting and legwork of the [history] kind of in

dialogue with this big picture, conceptual frame that I had done.

In some cases the division of labor was clear, and the work was implemented in a

fairly de-coupled way. Anachem described his work with Doolittle:

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When the proposal was written, we had very specific roles. My focus would be in
chemistry, but at the same time I would help to explain the results to [senior
collaborator], and then [senior collaborator] had his role in biology, and the
mathematics had his role, but as the project began, it kind of started to to
evolve, and then part of the other thing is that each group if you could find
something that could be very specific to your lab - maybe you're developing a
new technique or something.

Doolittle, Anachem’s collaborator added to this description:

My role, primarily, is to make sure that we’re all kind of on the same page...
everybody has kind of their own projects within the group.

For the participants (mostly scientists) engaged in larger team-based research projects,
the division of labor among partners appeared to be very clear, and the work of the
collaboration was done independently. resulting in both shared and independent
outcomes.

Most collaborators described partnerships in which division of labor was clear,
the research processes were more tightly coupled, and scholarly products were shared.
Cassandra described her integrated experience of working with her collaborator, Gary:

[Gary] would initiate the narrative; I don't think that way, and I like the

dialogue and then we would rework it, rework it, rework it, and rework it I

would initiate the [concept], and the [concept] ended up structuring the book

those it's really hard to remember where the ideas came from, and all of it was

written over and over and over we wrote, and rewrote, and we rewrote.
Sorenson, a natural scientist. talked about a collaboration he had early in his career with a
senior female colleague:

The writing of papers with Jean was always interesting, because Jean was very

much a person who liked to describe everything in great detail And I came

from a more terse point of view so she would give me a draft, and I would
cut out a lot and reword things, and she would take it, put some things back, and

so there was a real ebb and flow between the two of us in terms of how much we
would put in the paper.

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Spike’s experience writing with his senior collaborator also reflected the ebb and flow
described by Sorenson:

In the writing, as I recall, I think, basically, I wrote - certainly large portions of it I

wrote, and then he would do a lot of editing, and then he'd give it back to me. And

I'd implement his edits, and maybe respond to other comments he made.

The data suggested that how labor is divided, how tightly coupled role
implementation is. and the degree to which there are shared and/or separate scholarly
products may vary across intergenerational research collaborations.

Concluding Remarks — Collaborative Processes

The purpose of this part of Chapter Five was to develop a picture of the
collaborative processes of intergenerational research partnerships, from the perspective of
participants involved. Participants talked about four different ways that these partnerships
started: (a) through evolutionary or organic means; (b) as a result of one partner asking
another to join him or her on a project; or (c) after a third party (e. g. a student) brought
faculty members together.

Participants also talked about challenges they faced while working in these
collaborations. The faculty talked about the challenges of time (and the related issues of
work-load and work/family balance), physical distance, and issues with undergraduate
students.

Participants also talked about factors that buoyed the relationship — those factors
that facilitated progress on the intellectual task at hand. First and foremost, the junior and
senior collaborators, as well as the undergraduate students involved, were some of the
most intellectually strong in the country. Second, federal funding supported many of

these collaborative projects. Howard Hughes Medical Institute. the Mellon Foundation,

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and other governmental and non-governmental entities provided economic resources for
these projects. Participants provided personal support and demonstrated deep respect for
one another.

Finally, participants described how labor was divided between them and their
colleagues. How labor divided varied with some partners working very closely together
throughout the entire project, while others worked separately and came together on
different occasions in order to integrate the material they were producing.

The next section will address the outcomes that faculty participants experienced
as a result of participating in their collaboration(s).

Individual Outcomes

The outcomes of participation in intergenerational research collaborations that
were salient to participants cover a wide range of professional and personal dimensions. 1
will first explain how faculty participants saw participation in these collaborations as
impacting the junior members of the partnerships. Then I will present what findings
emerged about the outcomes for senior members of collaborations.

Outcomes — Senior Members of Collaborations
Learning to Navigate the “System "

Faculty in this study holding junior positions in collaborations learned a lot about
what it meant to be a full and successful participant in the academic workplace. Eight of
twenty-six faculty described these benefits.

Junior collaborators increased their ability to utilize and navigate the
departmental, institutional, and disciplinary systems within which they worked. Some

junior faculty learned how to decide what professional activities to get involved with and

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what activities to say no to. Within the context of Sorenson’s collaboration thirty years
ago with a female colleague 20 years his senior, he mentioned how this colleague helped
him to “be careful about what committees [he got] into prior to tenure.” Mambi found
himself in situations where he was given opportunities and presented with choices that he
couldn’t decide whether or not to pursue:

I think there are lots of occasions where I’m presented with choices and I’m not —

I would like to get someone else’s perspective. And he’s great. I can just walk

over there and say, “Do you thinkl should do this? Does this make sense?”

Other junior members of collaborations found their senior collaborators useful in
clearing up confusing political dynamics. Andrew explained the value he felt his
relationship to his collaborator brought that extended beyond the boundaries of their work
on the specific collaborative project:

And it’s been nice because it’s not just this project. But he’s kind of the person

that I’ve gone to most often, during my first couple of years, to be like, “What’s

going on here?”

This study contained an example of an individual (Saleem) who did not learn to
navigate the system of her discipline and suffered the consequences. Although in an
intellectual collaboration with her department chair, Saleem felt like she didn’t have
someone to guide her about how to get feedback on her work: “And so I did an
embarrassing thing. I wrote to the world expert in the field. Anyway, the entire thing was
very embarrassing in terms of the way that I approached it.” She went on to suggest that
if she had someone to act as a mentor, someone to help guide her as she developed as an

academic, she would not have made what she saw was a significant personal and

professional mistake.

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Impact on Teaching

Twelve of fourteen participants holding a more junior role in a collaboration
believed that their experience in the intergenerational research collaborations positively
impacted their classroom teaching.

Both Mambi’s development of a reader with his senior partner, as well as Julia’s
development of a Reader with her senior partner in their fields of study were driven by
needs that they perceived were not being met in the classroom. Now that the Reader

exists, they believe the quality of their classes has improved. According to Mambi:

 

The nice thing about this particular book is I use it in class. In many ways, I was
taking my experience in the classroom that heavily informed [the project] in
writing the book. [I’ve mainly become] a better teacher. I know I have a different
understanding of [social science discipline] and howl introduce it to students than
I did before I started the project.

Julia also said:

And so I started teaching [collaborator’s] classes, and, then, afterI got the job, I
started working on him to update - this is a 1972 version Of the book, and, so,
then, we made a much needed revised edition it had examples of students, at
College B - or writing about illegal car theft rings and - so I would have to teach
the book saying, "Those crazy kids in the '705" - It served my own interest, as a
teaching tool.

Several of the participants saw their collaborative scholarship as not only
impacting their teaching. but also see their teaching as impacting their ongoing
scholarship. They experience their teaching as fully integrated, and as having a reciprocal
relationship. Andrew, an Assistant Professor in a humanities department explained:

Certainly my fourth semester [discipline] class. . .there's been kind of the going

back and forth between the project, thinking about the project, and what I'm doing

in class [I think] Oh okay, this is what we're doing in my class. How would

that look or what would we do differently in the [scholarly product of the
collaboration] ?" But I think that there's kind of a reciprocal [relationship].

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Cassandra’s work with Gary actually evolved out of an experience collaborating on

 

teaching a course. So not surprisingly. Cassandra found her scholarly work with Gary

interdependent with her teaching:
And then given the subject matter of the book and the emphasis on social learning
and the emphasis on our courses on social learning, we really wanted to engage
the process of re-envisioning while writing a book about it.

Spike, an Associate Professor at College H, talked with me about how his increased

theoretical understanding that he developed in his collaboration enabled him to teach 1'

concepts at a higher level in his classrooms:

 

But also, I think my ability to teach at the advanced level in sort of the more
theoretical ends of chemistry [Cross talk] Refining it and extending my
understanding. So that definitely is an effect.
Other junior collaborators thought there was a connection, in so far as the faculty member
included content from the scholarly collaboration in a class used the collaborative project
to teach undergraduates in the research lab, or brought in a collaborative partner to be a
guest speaker in a course. Anachem discussed how his collaboration with Doolittle
provided him with more knowledge about a natural science discipline and he wove this
new knowledge into his class content:
In fact, about the very first lecture that I gave last year was kind of related to
something that was going on in [natural science discipline]. So in that standpoint,
it’s really enhanced my teaching because prior to this research project, in my
teaching I never made references to [natural science discipline] or anything that
goes on in [natural science discipline]. But now I find it more common for me to
do that.
Clara integrated some of her work from the collaboration by bringing guest speakers into

her class:

I have had members of his group come and help teach parts of my class In a
couple weeks, he's [her collaborator] gonna do a lab with my class. So that's

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kind of opened up some of those opportunities for my students, to have this other
expertise.

Finally, Tiffany. believed the content of her scholarship boosted her confidence in the
classroom:
It's helped me - it's helped me in teaching because it makes me feel more
comfortable just talking about - again, not just sort of broad geologic kind of
timescales, things that actually talk about how people interact with the earth, and
sort of more comfortable talking about that sort of in an environmental science

kind Of a way.

Increased Access to Networks ofPeople and Other Resources

 

One of the outcomes that was evident for nine of 14 faculty in junior roles in this
study was the benefit they got from being connected to new networks of professionals in
their discipline.

Mambi, in discussing his development of the Reader with Larry, expressed
gratitude that he now has contacts with more senior people in his field:

I didn’t realize at the time how beneficial it would have been to have him on
board both in terms of what was actually the product itself, but these different
communities that he’s in touch with I had no connections to the AP
community. In some ways, I can’t —— he’s kind of the point man for that
community. I this book. But I think he’s put me more in touch with a older group
of [scientists], which I think is quite useful. We wrote different — there are —
there’s an introductory chunk that we worked on intensively together. And then
there are different kind of sections. So we took the leads on different things.

Spike talked about how his relationship with his collaborator led to his involvement in
more visible disciplinary activities:
I guess one other thing is I'm now on the conference board for the [Sub-
disciplinary] Conference, and that's because he sort of nominated me and then
twisted - kind of twisted my arm, actually, in doing it, which is good in the sense

of visibility, and it's an honor, and all that. And on the other hand, it's still more
work.

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Scholarly Products

Participants with experience in the more junior role in research collaborations,
especially those who do not yet have tenure, had a particular incentive for their work with
their senior colleagues to result in scholarly products.

The scholarly products resulting from the work in these collaborations was
impressive. Mambi and Julia produced readers for their disciplines; Spike’s work with his
senior colleague resulted in 3 articles, one of which was single-authored; Tiffany,
Saleem, Anachem, Ruby, Doc, Clara, Hannah, and Tim each were able to report
significant federal and/or state grant support. In Saleem’s case (explained below), her
inability to produce a sole-authored scholarly product as a result of her participation in a
collaboration had serious consequences for her career.

Employment

The decision to engage with senior colleagues in a collaboration had a significant
impact on the junior participants in the area of employment.

In the cases of two of the faculty in the study, the act of collaborating with senior
colleagues helped them make decisions to stay in academia. Julia was very upfront about
her mixed feelings about remaining a faculty member:

I think it’s kept me in the job. I constantly think about leaving work [I’m]

writing a book on highly educated married with children opting out of the labor

force [Laughter] just — my family situation, I don’t have to work for — we
could get on without my income.
Spike was also very clear that his collaboration with his senior colleague helped him

decide to stay in academe, but he also realized that his strengths and interests might lie

more in administration than research:

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In some way it may even connect with the fact that I returned to academia rather
than jumping ship to industry as I think about it now [we] were in a beautiful
new science building when I was there [at his collaborator’s lab], just had been
completed recently And it turned out that my collaborator and mentor, had

been the person in the chemistry department in charge of the whole thing I

became interested in these sorts of things upon my return from that leave, I

became the chemistry department's lead person for this project.

Several junior participants in this study asserted that the intellectual work that
resulted from their collaboration with their senior partner was what “clinched” their
tenure case. Some implied that letters of recommendation from their senior colleagues
were useful in their tenure application. Others suggested that they were motivated to get
publications out under their own name to feel confident that they would be seen as a
scholar with their own identity. Of all of the participants who had experience in the more
junior role in collaborations (fourteen), twelve started partnerships with senior colleagues
prior to receiving tenure. Of those twelve, six are now tenured at the rank of associate or
Professor, five are not yet at the tenure review stage, and one (discussed below) was
notified four months after our interview that she did not receive tenure.

Some faculty, like Ruby, spoke of the direct role they felt the collaboration, or the
intellectual products of the collaboration, had in their positive tenure decisions:

[When did you start the collaboration?] A little bit before [tenure]. Arguably,

that grant was what sealed my tenure I think I probably would have gotten

tenure anyway, but he grant was definitely the point at which it was obvious.
Anachem was very clear that developing strategic collaborations with someone outside of
his own department was important for his long-term job security:

But at the same time, one of the things that I've learned is that you have to

develop strategic collaborations, and in developing the strategic collaborations, I

think it's to the advantage of younger faculty to collaborate with the older faculty

- one, because if you don't have tenure, you need others recommendation, from

individuals outside of your department, and the individuals would need to be - the
individuals were already tenured.

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Mambi was also aware of the importance of having outside faculty to write him letters for
tenure:

It counts for promotion and tenure. Textbooks are, frankly, within the discipline, a

good way to get your name out. So it's gonna be Machiavellian It's useful in that

regard.

Saleem, an Assistant Professor at College A, applied for tenure during the
semester of our interview. As I wrote up the findings of this study, I received word from
her that her tenure application had been rejected, and that she was not appealing the
decision. In her case, she was told that she was denied promotion and tenure at College A
because of the lack of publications on the collaborative project. She went on to say that
although she believed there was an inherent race and gender bias at College A, that she
didn’t “deliver her part of the deal on time.”

Outcomes -— Senior Members of Collaboration

Faculty in this study who held the senior position in collaborations (fourteen)
within which they were involved reported a diverse array of individual outcomes. Three
outcomes were most often mentioned by the participants: (a) an opportunity to interact
and think across interdisciplinary boundaries; (b) support for their roles as departmental
leaders; and (c) affective outcomes, such as feelings of excitement and renewal.
Interdisciplinary Thought and Action

Several (four) of the participants holding the more senior position in their
collaborations commented on how the work they engaged in with their junior colleagues

gave them an opportunity to cross disciplinary boundaries in their research and teaching

in ways that they hadn’t had a chance to do so in the past. Ellen, Hank, Doolittle, and

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Callithrix all discussed their interdisciplinary work with theirjunior colleagues as
pushing them to consider new ways of thinking and looking at problems.

C allithrix, an endowed professor of a natural science discipline, worked with a
junior colleague in a social science unit at her institution. Callithrix’s colleague asked her
to work with her to develop, write and implement an NSF grant. One primary effect that
this work had on Callithrix was to challenge her idea of what valid science was, and to
cause her to feel some disequilibrium as she tried to relate to literature from a field with
different ontological assumptions from her own. Callithrix told me about a key moment
in her collaboration with her junior colleague:

There was another issue where it was this issue of truth, knowledge, and
whether reality is really out there for me as a scientist, there is a reality out
there that is - even if humans weren't there, it would still be there. And I think that
that's, at base, true for [junior partner] too, but academically it's not true [for her].
Academically [for junior collaborator], knowledge is completely human-based,
and without humans, you can't [have reality]. So I think that animals can think,
and she doesn't think that animals can think, and I'm sure that they think. And
there's just no question in my mind that my cats can think, do problem solving,
and lots of things. For [junior collaborator], if language is not involved, none of
the rest of it is involved.

C allithrix continues and asserted that her junior colleague’s perspective couldn’t be ‘true’
and suggested that her junior colleague recognizes this inconsistency because:

We have many conversations - she plays the mandolin - she loves the mandolin,
and she loves the interaction she has when playing the mandolin. And if push
comes to shove, she has to agree that she's thinking when she's playing the
mandolin, but it's not language. But I don't go there in some sense because what's
the point. But she can't play the mandolin and think about whether she's gonna do
this improvisation or that improvisation linguistically. She has to do it from some
other thought process, and I'm sure she knows that - and how people trade off
places in a jamming session - I mean she knows all that works nonverbally.

As a result of this collaboration, Callithrix approached the teaching of an introductory

freshman seminar differently from previous years:

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So I teach this first-year seminar what was important is that students see that
they could - it's epistemological - that any given object can be seen from a variety
of different perspectives, and that liberal arts education is being able to see any
different object from a variety of perspectives.

And the thing I plopped on the table was a lion. So I literally this time - which I
wouldn't have done before — [I] plopped a lion's skull in the middle of the table
and asked each student to pretend they were from any department on campus and

tell me what somebody from that department would see about that skull. And I'd

never done that before - I never specifically said, "You have to be this

." I'll go around and say, "What do you see?" But I never forced them
to try to see things as a different kind of academic.
Increased eflectiveness as department head

The data in this study also revealed that for three of the participants, working on
projects with their junior colleagues enabled them to be more effective in their roles as
department administrators.

In my conversation with Hank, he talked about how his positive experience
collaborating with one junior colleague in a different department (Tiffany) helped him to
think more critically about how to support a new Assistant Professor in his own
department that was getting off to a slower start in research and teaching:

Because of the interaction I had with [Tiffany], it made me think more about what

I needed to do for Sarah They're very different people [Tiffany] [was]

forthright [junior colleague much more reserved And I was getting a little

worried You know, a new colleague who we were all really excited about,
from an intellectual standpoint, and for what she could bring to our curriculum
and to our students, that if she didn't get started in the right way, there might be
problems for her and for us in the long run.
This observation about the differences between Tiffany and his other junior colleague led
him to wonder what he could do, as program director, to support this faculty member
who was getting a “slow start”:

[I] think a lot of it her not knowing the ropes and I just would say “Well,

you want to work with this student here's how it all works ...” Well, we get

stuff up and running, and she said, “well we're gonna need some regents.” Well,
here's how we get the money for that, and you're free to do that.

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As a result, the junior colleague got a research project going, attracted students to her
team, and working with Hank, produced a poster for a conference. Hank continued to
observe initiative taking behavior on the part of this junior colleague; he is pleased with
her progress. He ended this part of our conversation by saying:

So I think it was - in some way I might have been oblivious if I was working on

my own and hadn't worked with [Tiffany] 'Cause I was sort of getting back

into things 'cause I've been in administration and was just sort of doing my own
thing. So [Tiffany] got me thinking about it, I guess, a little bit.

Larry talked about how his participation in an intergenerational research
collaboration increased in his department’s reputation within College B, the local
community, and with research institutions in the region:

I think it enhanced the reputation of the department immeasurably Because

[we gave] these presentations to packed audiences and, actually, I did some and

[junior collaborator] did some, but we had students present too, which kind of

blew away people to see what the [College B] students are capable of doing.

These are brilliant students that we're working with. We went over to the [flagship

research university] to present and kind of shook them up because they're not

working with their undergraduates in research. So some of the faculty were quite
taken back by this. But otherwise, no, I think it kind of reaffirmed what we've got
going here.

In terms of the reputation with administrators within College B, Larry said:

The image that came out of this in the college was, "Yeah, here's a group, the

department that's really doing what the president wants done." I can't say that the

[college has] poured a lot of money our way. But we're spoken of.

The interdisciplinary collaboration Doolittle was engaged in with his junior
colleagues was central to his intellectual work at College B. This project was his primary
research project. His leadership on this project brought attention to his work, and put him

in the position as a “model” of how interdisciplinary work at College A should be done:

I guess what the collaborative work, again, because it's interdisciplinary has
allowed me to kind of, well, I won't say be a poster child but something like

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*

that there is a big effort here at home to become more interdisciplinary
within the sciences so, I was one of a few faculty that were involved in
interdisciplinary research ...Yeah. So, I think I was able to kind of facilitate that
whole movement here at [College A] And - and so, I mean, it was - that was, I
think, beneficial, because my peers in the department saw, well, our Chair is in
this, maybe we should do it, or we could consider it So, I think it was
beneficial for the department.

Excitement and Renewal
Themes of renewal and excitement permeated the experiences of many of the
faculty who served as senior members of collaborations. Elisa, a female 58-year-old
biologist, is an example. She described her collaboration with a junior physicist as “life
changing”:
This was a turning point. This Nature paper was a turning point I had done
administrative work for six years, and I had kept my research going but sort of at
a low level. I had no idea if I would ever be productive again. I had stuff going,
but I just didn’t know if I’d publish again. I hadn’t published [in] about ten years
and this discovery and this paper just gave me tremendous confidence.
At the same time that she and her junior collaborator made this discovery, she had the
opportunity to teach a course that she had been waiting 18 years to teach:
So when I taught the course, there was all this new evolutionary information. And
I was getting to take kids out into the field and show them plants and tell them all
these interesting things about plants that I had been noticing And everyone
independently on their little evaluation forms said, “This course has changed
the way I look at the world.”
She then added that both the Nature paper and the success of this course changed the way
she saw herself, and how some of her colleagues saw her:
...it gave me confidence because well, you know, you hear things around — the
word on me. I’m a soft person on tenure decisions, but the word was “Oh, don’t
pay much attention to [Elisa] because she really doesn’t do research.” People are

very mean. . .so what I did with this Nature paper with my colleagues — was totally
unexpected by my colleagues and not liked by many of them Isn’t that awful?

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She recognized the important role her junior colleague played not only intellectually, but
in supporting her self-confidence:

So it was a transforming experience for me, the interdisciplinary work in that we

were able — and I needed my younger colleagues in a way to say, “Okay, let’s just

send it to Science or Nature.” I mean I’m not sure I would’ve had the courage.

And I remember [junior collaborator] sitting here and he said, “[Elisa], just hit

the send button.” He said, “Just hit the send.” I said, “Really? Do you think it’s

too — do we have it ready to go?” He said, “Just hit it.” “And you have to do it,”
he said. And I hit the send button.

Unfortunately for Elisa’s collaborator (not in this study), he was not granted
tenure by the College promotion committee (after a unanimous vote from his physical
science department) because his work was seen by some as being too closely aligned with
Elisa’s. In addition, Elisa believes that her collaborator’s association with her hurt him, as
a colleague that did not hold her in high regard sat on the college promotion committee
that year. Fortunately for her collaborator, he was hired at another research-oriented
liberal arts college and their collaboration has continued.

Ellen, a philosophy professor at College A, talked about how her collaboration on
a historiography with a more junior colleague, gave her an opportunity to re-examine her
professional identity as a philosopher:

Well, I think actually just taking time out you know from your own discipline,

you come back to it with a kind of different sense of what you want to do. I think

it did give me perspective that made me understand that what I want to do as a

philosopher is write in a way that’s more broadly useful than the way a lot of

philosopher’s write.

Hank, a professor of biology at College B, expressed his excitement at being
invited to speak at the state flagship institution about the work he was engaged in with his

junior colleague. This invitation made him take a look at his professional identity as a

biologist and faculty member at this point of his career.

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Then one day I get this call from — there’s a hydrologic research lab on the [Major
River] here that the [Public Research I Institution] runs And somebody calls
me from there and says, “We’d like you to come give a seminar about why
mussels and sediment might be of interest. I went, huh? “Well [Tiffany] said, we
ought to listen to you about the mussels and what they might be doing to the
sediment So I was like, all of a sudden - you know I’ve been here 20 years,
and I hadn’t really done anything with that ...Yeah, this research group wanted
me to come over and tell them something. And I was like, “This is cool.”
Impact on Teaching
Nine of the participants who spoke of their experience in a senior role in a
collaboration were able to articulate the impact that their participation had on their
teaching. However. four senior participants, Larry, Parker, Barry, and Sevren said the
collaborations had no impact on their teaching.
Wanda, professor of a social science department at College C, explained how she
and her junior colleague used the material from their joint research in their classrooms:
We both used this collaborative research in our classes. I'm going to use it in the
senior seminar. He's used it in his course on inequality I think his exposure to
some of the law and economic stuff has maybe enriched how he does bits of it,
and my exposure to the intergenerational elasticity literature has helped me, so it's
definitely helped in our teaching and what we bring in.
Hank talked about how he redesigned one of his courses as a result of what he learned
engaging in the research collaboration with his junior colleague:
Yeah, my [upper level natural science] class is all different now, so I've changed
whole sections she [Tiffany] got me started thinking about it. I did a lot more
reading, went to these meetings, and it changed the focus of a number of things
there. So that course, which had been pretty standard, but up-to-date course has
broadened considerably and is much broader.
Concluding Remarks — Individual Outcomes
Junior

As a result of participating in these collaborations, junior faculty learned about

navigating the norms and policies of their institutions and disciplines. Some of them

146

spoke of being able to ask their senior colleagues questions about the academic
workplace — “should I join this committee?”, “what was that email about?” -- while
engaging in work related to their joint scholarly pursuits. Junior collaborators also
reported that their work in the collaboration impacted their teaching in a positive way.
They (junior faculty) talked about how they gained access to new networks and resources
and produced scholarly products such as grants, papers and books. For faculty members
who began collaborating with a senior colleague prior to being granted tenure, these
scholarly outcomes resulted in successful tenure cases. Unfortunately, one junior .

collaborator in this study did not receive tenure because of publications from the

 

intergenerational research collaboration of which she was a part.
Senior

The senior partners in this study also benefited from their participation in these
collaborations. Several faculty spoke of the opportunity that their collaborations provided
them to interact with faculty in other disciplines. Those senior faculty who were
department chairs spoke fondly of how the successes of these collaborations brought
more visibility — from both internal and external sources — to their departments. Many of
the faculty talked about the excitement and renewal that resulted from engaging in
scholarly work with a junior colleague. However, one of these senior colleagues suffered
through the loss of her collaborator due to a negative tenure decision at the college.
Finally, more than half of the senior participants talked about the positive impact that

their work in the intergenerational research collaboration had on their teaching.

147

Summary of Chapter Five

In this chapter I presented the themes that arose from the interviews I had with
participants about the nature of their experience in an intergenerational research
collaboration. I organized the reporting of these themes around three conceptual areas
highlighted by ecological approaches to human development — individual attributes,
contextual attributes and collaborative processes. As will be described in Chapter Six, an
ecological approach to human development focuses on how developmental outcomes are
achieved, rather than measuring the outcomes themselves. Therefore, due to the nature of
my research question, I added a fourth conceptual area around which I coded the outcome
data. Figure 5.1 was provided at the beginning of this chapter, and represents the four
pronged model just described. In Chapter Six — the discussion — I will report what I found
as the most compelling findings within the context of two theoretical frameworks, and

will provide implications for future research and practice.

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CHAPTER SIX — DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
Introduction
The purpose of this final chapter is to present:

1. An overview of the study. including rationale, research questions and method
that drove this research;

2. A review of the central findings that emerged from the data;

3. The theoretical perspectives used in this study, with comments about their
usefulness and limitations for interpreting the findings, as well as other
theoretical perspectives that may mitigate these limitations;

4. A brief review of the benefits and limitations of the study’s sample size, as
well as suggestions of other methodological approaches that could be used in
future research;

5. Four significant contributions of this work and implications these findings
have for future research;

6. Implications for policy and practice.

Study Rationale
Intergenerational research collaborations are ecological niches (Bronfenbrenner,
1979) within the academic workplace where two or more faculty can collaborate and
produce scholarly products. These interpersonal spaces allow both junior and senior
members of collaborations to contribute unique skills, talents and perspectives to a
research problem. It is particularly important to study these collaborations during this

time in history, as the academic workplace is more generationally diverse than ever

149

before, and the intellectual and fiscal demands for collaborative work are increasing at a
dramatic rate.

The experiences of faculty at research-oriented liberal arts colleges were the focus
of this investigation. Faculty at these institutions are expected to, in the words of one
participant, “. .. publish like you’re at a research university, teach like you’re at a
teaching institution and the service makes people know your name and [make sure you
don’t] piss anyone off” [Julia]. This quote represents a broader trend in which all
institutional types are “ratcheting up” their expectations for faculty productivity
(Duderstadt, 2000).

Research-oriented liberal arts colleges are responsible for educating a
disproportionate number of students who go on to earn their doctorates and eventually
move into academic positions (Schuman, 2003). It is for this additional reason that the
professional development of faculty at these institutions should be of concern to
administrators and policy—makers. Research-oriented liberal arts colleges as a whole are
an under-studied context. Many of the studies found in higher education research journals
have been undertaken in contexts other than research-oriented liberal arts colleges:
community colleges, comprehensive institutions, and research institutions. Therefore,
another contribution of this research is to build upon an emerging empirical literature
base that focuses on the experience of faculty at these institutions.

Research Questions

Making use of an inductive methodology, this exploratory field study was driven

by the following research question: What is the nature of intergenerational research

collaborations at research-oriented liberal arts colleges, from the perspectives of faculty

150

participants? Four additional research questions were explored in order to answer this
central question:
1. What attributes of individual faculty members’ impact their experience of the
nature of intergenerational research collaborations?
2. What contextual factors impact the faculty members’ experience of the nature

of intergenerational research collaborations?

 

3. What collaborative processes are a part of faculty members’ experiences of
the nature of intergenerational research collaborations?
4. What individual outcomes are a part of faculty members’ experiences of the
nature of intergenerational research collaborations?
Method
This project was a qualitative study that relied upon 26 interviews with faculty at
research-oriented liberal arts colleges. During July 2007, I contacted Provosts and/or

Deans of Faculty at ten research-oriented liberal arts colleges in three regions of the

 

United States, asking for recommendations of names of faculty on their campuses that
were, or had been involved in intergenerational research collaborations. After screening
53 possible respondents, I found 26 faculty on ten campuses that both met the
participation criterion and were willing and able to meet with me for an interview. During
an eight-week period from August through October 2007, I traveled to ten campuses to

meet with participants.

151

Overview of Study Findings

In Chapter Five, I reported the study findings in great detail. I will review the
most central findings here, then discuss theoretical support for these results. Table 6.1
(Appendix H) provides a visual overview of these findings.

Individual Attributes

Attributes of individuals involved in intergenerational research collaborations
contributed to the success (or failure) of these partnerships. The individual attributes that
emerged from the data in this study as having an impact include: generational attributes,
motivations, and personal dispositions of both the junior and senior partners.
Generational Attributes

Generational characteristics of an individual — including a person’s life stage,
career stage, or intellectual generation - influenced how collaborations began, proceeded,
and came to completion. First, over half of the junior faculty talked about how the life
stage they were currently experiencing — parenthood — impacted their experiences in
intergenerational research collaborations. It was quite obvious that these faculty loved
their roles as parents, but discussed how their status as parents of young children: (a)
added to the challenge of balancing work and family; (b) influenced how they chose
research projects to become involved with; and, (c) decreased the amount of time they
could spend on collaborative work with their colleagues. Several senior faculty
mentioned the disruption a junior colleague’s pregnancy or parental status had on their
work together.

Second, junior members of collaborations who were in the early stages of their

academic careers mentioned feelings of competition with their generational peers. These

152

early career faculty said they liked working with senior colleagues because they felt less
competition with these more senior colleagues, whom they considered generous with
authorship and other intellectual capital.

Third, differences in intellectual generations between participants were noted as
being valuable to the partnership. Junior partners who went to graduate school during
different eras from their senior collaborators brought new disciplinary and technical
knowledge to the project. Senior partners brought their own knowledge about earlier
paradigms in the field, and networks of established scholars with whom the team could
consult.

Motivating Factors

All but one of the participants in this study were motivated to collaborate with
their junior or senior peers because of the scientific contributions that they perceived the
collaborator could make to projects of joint interest. The majority of senior participants
were motivated to participate by the disciplinary and/or technological expertise of their
more junior colleagues. Other senior collaborators expressed their desire to help their
junior colleagues gain forward momentum with their research. The majority of junior
participants were motivated by the access their senior collaborators had to networks and
resources, as well as to institutional and disciplinary memory.

Individual Dispositions

Each of the faculty members in this study demonstrated at least one of the
following dispositions - an openness to learning, an ability to be pro-active, and an
ability to think meta-cognitively about their professional and personal priorities vis-a-vis

the intergenerational research collaboration.

153

 

 

Table 6.2

Individual Attributes Impacting Participant Experiences of the Nature of
I ntergenerational Research Collaborations — Central Findings

 

Individual Attributes Impacting Participant Experiences oflntergenerational
Research Collaborations — Central Findings

 

Generational Attributes:

° life stage (parenthood)
' career stage (feelings of competition by early career faculty)
° intellectual generation (skills, paradigms, networks)

 

Allotivations:

topic of scholarly inquiry

disciplinary & technical expertise of collaborator (senior)
help colleague gain momentum in research (senior)
access to resources & networks of collaborator (junior)
access to institutional & disciplinary memory (junior)

 

Dispositions:

° openness to learning
0 pro-active behavior
° meta-cognitive thought

 

 

 

Contextual Factors

There were several contextual elements unique to research-oriented liberal arts
colleges that played a role in shaping how participants experienced the intergenerational
research collaborations with which they were involved. One of the fundamental vehicles
for education at research-oriented liberal arts colleges is undergraduate research.
Participants talked about the role that undergraduates had in keeping things “fresh” for
them intellectually, as well as the ability they had to undertake technical tasks (e.g.,

computer programming) that were not a part of their own repertoire of skills. Some

154

‘J.IL '1'- A‘AJ"
I

 

 

 

participants discussed challenges supervising undergraduate students who worked with
them.

Another characteristic of the research-oriented liberal arts colleges in this study
was a lack of critical mass of faculty. The chance of being the only faculty member in a
department or institution across a number of possible dimensions, including gender,

ethnicity, parental status, or sub-discipline, was high due to the small number of faculty

 

on the campuses (usually 150-200), and within departments (e.g., a chemistry department
of 8 at a research-oriented liberal arts college vs. a department of 50 at a research

institution). Junior faculty who discussed feeling isolated in their departments or at their

 

institutions expressed this concern most often.

At research-oriented liberal arts institutions, expectations for research are high,
yet faculty at these colleges have very limited time periods in which to engage in
research. Pre- and post-tenure sabbaticals, as well as summer recess periods were the
largest blocks of time that faculty had to undertake research. The pressures of teaching
and service responsibilities from September through May put limitations on the time the
participants had to engage in research with their collaborative partners throughout the

academic year.

155

 

Table 6.3

Contextual Factors Impacting Participant Experiences of the Nature of
Intergenerational Research Collaborations — Central Findings

 

Contextual Attributes Impacting Participant Experiences of the Nature of
Intergenerational Research Collaborations — Central Findings

 

' heavy undergraduate involvement in research

 

0 lack of critical mass of faculty along various dimensions can lead to feelings of
isolation

 

° time for research

 

 

 

Collaborative Processes

The Beginning ofCollaborations

In this study, 100 percent of the collaborations discussed by the participants began
as a result of partners taking the initiative to start a partnership, rather than as a result of
an institutional policy or mandate. The collaborations that the study participants
described began in one of four ways: (a) a senior colleague asked a junior colleague to
collaborate; (b) a junior and senior colleague had conversations over time that resulted in
a decision to collaborate; (c) ajunior colleague asked a senior colleague to collaborate;
and (cl) a third party, a student or faculty member, brought the parties together.
Challenges

The most frequently mentioned challenge by all participants was the lack of time
they had to fulfill all of their professional and personal commitments. A smaller number

of participants mentioned challenges related to managing undergraduates on their teams,

156

as well as the barriers that large geographical distances can play in preventing progress
on work together.
Facilitating Factors

In terms of facilitating factors, the majority of faculty reported that the

collaborative research project was funded by private sources (foundations, governmental

agencies) or through the colleges themselves (through sabbatical support). Approximately

one-fourth of the faculty specifically mentioned feelings of interpersonal affection —
feelings of connection, affirmation, care and trust for or from the collaborative partner.
This result seemed low, as a basic valuing of an individual has been identified as a
“foundational element” of reciprocal relationships between faculty members (Gappa,
Austin, & Trice, 2006). Either 75% of the study participants did not experience such
feelings, or the results reflect great variation in individuals’ ability or desire to talk about
affective issues in professional relationships.
Division of Labor

Two findings were related to division of labor and individual roles in
collaborations. All of the faculty in this study were able to clearly identify what each
party in their partnership contributed to the collaborations, and what roles they played.
The degree to which collaborative work was integrated (or quite decoupled) varied across
participants. Some participants in the natural or physical sciences implemented their
responsibilities for the collaboration within their own lab with their own students, quite
separate from their collaborative partner. In other cases, the partners worked together in
seamless ways. This variation in the degree of integration varied across different

collaborative tasks (e.g.,, study design, data collection, writing, other).

157

 

 

 

Table 6.4

Collaborative Processes Involved in Intergenerational Research

 

 

 

Collaborations
Collaborative Processes Involved in
Intergenerational Research Collaborations
Beginnings:

° senior asksjunior

° junior asks senior

' evolves

0

third party connection

 

Challenges:
0 time (professional & personal obligations)
' physical distance
' issues with undergraduate students

 

 

Facilitating Factors:
' funding (grants, sabbaticals)
' interpersonal support

 

Roles & Division of Labor:
0 clear roles
° variation in integration of work across tasks and disciplines

 

 

 

Individual Outcomes

Participation in an intergenerational research collaboration resulted in a wide
variety of professional and personal outcomes for respondents.
Outcomes — Junior Participants

The majority of participants holding a more junior role suggested that in part, they
learned how to navigate the institutional and/or disciplinary “systems” within which they
work, from their senior colleagues in collaborations they described. Over half of the
junior respondents mentioned the access they gained to an expanded set of resources and

people in their disciplines. They also mentioned they were able to get advice about

158

teaching from their senior colleagues, as well as incorporate the scholarly content of the
collaboration into their classroom curricula. The junior participants also received the
benefit of producing scholarly products from this collaborative work. In many cases, the
grants received and publications produced were important elements in the tenure cases of
the junior partners. One junior participant said that the enjoyment she derived from the
collaboration prevented her from leaving the academy and caring for her children full-
time. There was one participant in this study that received word that she did not receive
tenure. She was told she did not produce enough articles over the course of the
collaboration with her senior colleague. In another case, a senior participant in this study
described how her collaborator who resided in a different department did not get tenure.
The senior informant suggested that her political “enemies” lobbied for this result. Both
of these stories are cautionary tales for early career faculty deciding whether or not to
enter such a partnership.

Table 6.5

Individual Outcomes (junior participants) — Central Findings

 

Individual Outcomes for Junior Participants — Central Findings

 

° navigation of institutional & disciplinary system

 

° access to resources and DCIWOI'kS

 

° intellectual products (grants, publications)

 

0 employment

 

0 advice about teaching

 

 

 

159

 

 

 

 

Outcomes — Senior Participants

For the participants in a more senior role, several outcomes were evident. About
one-third of the senior collaborators remarked that their teaching was impacted in a
positive way. Another third of senior respondents experienced the collaboration as an
Opportunity to interact and think across interdisciplinary boundaries. For three of the
participants who were also department/program chairs, they saw benefits that
participation in the intergenerational research collaboration brought to their department in
terms of retention of faculty (e.g., helped with tenure), and visibility. About one fourth of

senior participants talked about how their participation in these collaborations resulted in l

 

a sense of renewal and excitement about their academic careers.

Table 6.6

Individual Outcomes (senior participants) — Central Findings

 

Individual Outcomes for Senior Participants — Central Findings

 

° teaching

 

° disciplinary & technical knowledge

 

° prestige on department

 

' renewal

 

° intellectual products

 

° opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary work

 

 

 

Conceptual Framework
Two closely related theoretical perspectives influenced how I framed the research
question and designed this study. I will discuss both the usefulness and limitations of
ecological systems theory and life course theory in helping me make meaning of the
study findings. I will suggest Other theoretical approaches that would be useful in

interpreting this data. Over the next several paragraphs I will organize the uses and

160

 

limitations of these approaches around the four elements of an intergenerational research
collaboration that I presented in earlier chapters — individual attributes, contextual
factors, collaborative processes, and individual outcomes.

Individual Attributes

Individual attributes “can set in motion reciprocal processes of interpersonal
interaction, often escalating over time, that, in turn, can influence the course of
development” (Bronfenbrenner, p. 12, 1993). An ecological approach to development
suggests that developmentally instigative characteristics (DIC’S) are attributes that enable
an individual to actively engage with his or her environment. These DIC’s “. . .invite or
discourage reactions from the environment of a kind that can disrupt or foster processes
of growth” (Bronfenbrenner, p. 11, 1993).

As a whole, both junior and senior participants in this study demonstrated an
active orientation towards their environments, demonstrating initiative-taking behavior
and an ability to scan the environments of their institutions (and other institutions) for
important information about the availability of fiscal, intellectual, and cultural resources.
Bronfenbrenner (1993) states that individuals demonstrating this ability have developed a
set of structuring proclivities (a DIC) that enable them to “. . .select, explore,
conceptualize, elaborate, reorganize and construct social and physical environments”
(Bronfenbrenner, p. 99, 1989).

In my reporting of the findings in this study, I suggested that participants in this
study were motivated to become involved in their intergenerational research
collaborations by a variety of sources. I need not make a large logical leap forward to

suggest that there are qualities participants demonstrated that motivated their

161

 

 

 

collaborative partners to collaborate with them. These personal and professional qualities
that appealed to the partners of the participants in this study were personal stimulus
qualities (also a DIC). Each of the developmentally instigative characteristics described
above served to propel the professional development of a faculty member forward along
dimensions important for success in his or her context.

In addition to dispositions and motivational factors, the data in this study also
supported the assertion that generational attributes can impact an individual’s experience
of a collaboration. Life-course theory explains why generational attributes matter in how
someone experiences, and eventually benefits (or falters) from an intergenerational
research collaboration. Life course scholars embrace the perspective that biographical
time (e. g., life stage and career stage) and historical time (e.g., the scientific era in which
one was trained) interact to influence individuals’ developmental progress. Another life
course theorist, Dan McAdams, engaged in empirical research in the early 19905 that
resulted in the development of a model of generativity that distinguished between
generative behaviors and motivations, and suggested that generative behavior could be
enacted by individuals at any period during the life course. Several participants in this
study engaged in generative behavior — acts of “offering” (McAdams & de St. Aubin,
1992) and generosity towards their collaborative partners.

In addition to these frameworks, other theoretical perspectives, including
motivation and self-efficacy theories, provide a lens within which to explore how
individual attitudes and behaviors impact individuals’ experiences of the collaboration.
Within the literature on adult motivation, theories that explore both the processes and

goals (Knowles, 1980; Tough, 1979) of self-directed learning might be very useful in

162

 

 

 

understanding the experience of a faculty member engaging in an interdisciplinary
research collaboration. Learning theorists explain that being able to be self-directed in
one’s learning requires “a set of personal attributes and specific skills” (Merriam,
Caffarella, & Baumgartner, p. 107, 2007) on the part of the learner. In future studies, the
self-directed learning literature could be useful in helping researchers identify attributes
that might mirror (or be different from) the attributes that ecological perspectives suggest
support an individual’s personal and/or professional development.
Contextual Factors

The majority of faculty in this study mentioned the pressure they felt meeting all
of the professional and personal obligations in their lives. Ecological systems theory
provides a lens in which to understand that each person develops within the context of
multiple microsystems — the most proximal environments within which faculty members
are engaged. Each faculty member mentioned multiple professional microsystems --
intergenerational research collaborations, classrooms, departments, lab teams — and
personal microsystems —- faith communities, family — with which they are a part.

Ecological theory explains that one’s experience in one microsystem cannot be
disconnected from another microsystem. According to Bronfenbrenner (1979; 1986;
1993), the environment within which these microsystems interact (through a developing
person) is called the mesosystem of a person’s environmental context. In the case of
faculty in this study, the tension that they felt between professional and personal
responsibilities was theoretically played out within the mesosystem portion of their

environments (Figure 6.1, Appendix F).

163

 

 

An additional finding that emerged was that the culture, missions, policies, and
structures of institutions -— such as disciplinary organizations, governments, and colleges -
- influenced the nature of these collaborations as experienced by some participants. An
exosystem is the dimension of the environment that does not immediately contain the
developing person, but includes the cultural and structural aspects of the institution(s)
within which an individual exists. (Figure 6.1, Appendix F)

Finally, there are societal norms and values that either implicitly or explicitly
impact a faculty member’s experience of their work. These norms and values make up an
individual’s macrosystem -- the most distal zone of an individual’s developmental
context. All of the faculty in this study were (and probably still are) enacting an “ideal
worker” archetype -— a faculty member that can “do it all” — attend to teaching, research,
and service responsibilities, as well as responsibilities at home. This archetype, in
addition to assumptions about gender roles in parenting, were predominant in the
comments of the participants. See figure 6.1 in Appendix F for display of all of the nested
contexts within which the faculty participants in this study reside.

What other theoretical perspectives might inform understanding of the contexts
within which faculty collaborators work? In Beyond Leadership (1994), Warren Bennis
and colleagues introduced a paradigm suggesting that leaders, in ever growing conditions
of chaos and change, need to be able to attend to multiple levels of their professional
environments at once. They (Bennis, Parikh, & Lessem, 1994) developed a leadership
model that focuses on individual, group, organizational, and societal development and
sustainability. Using this model to view all faculty as leaders, regardless of their formal

positions, would open a conversation in higher education about the importance of

164

 

 

individual faculty action, faculty development, and faculty collaboration in building
sustainable institutions of higher learning that serve not only students, but the broader
cultural and societal context. This model reinforces the reciprocal nature of the
relationship between a faculty member and his or her nested environments by providing
specific strategies for how individuals can influence the groups, organizations, and
societies within which they exist. At a much larger scale, such a perspective would help
us understand intergenerational research collaborations as not just impacting the
individual (which was the focus of this study), but also departments, institutions,
disciplines. and societies.
Collaborative Processes

Ecological systems theory provides a useful perspective from which to understand
the collaborative processes present in participants’ collaborations, to the extent that the
model supports the idea that processes between collaborative partners were reciprocal in
this investigation. However, as ecological theory is not able to explain the collaborative
processes in more detail, a theoretical gap is left to fill. Negotiated order theory,
introduced to the collaboration literature by Gray (1989), explains how collaborators
become actively involved in an ongoing process of negotiating and renegotiating the
collaborative relationship. Austin and Baldwin (1995) used this framework in a study of
long-term research collaborations, and developed a model that laid out several
dimensions that can serve as analytical tools of the collaborative process: division of
labor, flexibility of roles, proximity of partners, depth of relationship, and similarity of
standards for performance. This model provides language with which I could return to

examine the data in this study. However, since I did not use this framework in my study

165

 

design, the amount of relevant data from this study is minimal. However, this perspective
should inform future research.
Individual Outcomes
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework emphasizes processes, not outcomes, of
development. This focus makes the model very flexible in that it can be used to examine

a wide range of developmental processes and outcomes. However, this lack of focus on

 

the outcomes of development spurred me to consider what other theoretical perspectives ’3
could complement an ecological lens and provide language to talk about individual
outcomes.

Reflecting upon the study findings, it became clear that mentoring models have an

 

important role to play in understanding the nature of intergenerational research
collaborations. There are ways in which the data in this study mirror some of what we
know about mentoring. For example, the individual outcomes experienced by participants
in junior or senior roles in this study reflect what the literature has identified as benefits
of mentoring for both mentors and mentees. Suedkamp, Wells, Ryan, Carnpa, and Smith
(2005) undertook an extensive review of the mentoring literature and developed a
framework that places the benefits of being a mentor into five broad categories: personal
values, social change, professional capital, career enhancement, and resource
development. Using Kram’s (1985) types of mentoring (psychosocial and career),
Suedkamp Wells, et a1. (2005) also reviewed the literature on the benefits of mentoring
for the mentee. These possible outcomes for mentors and mentees are listed in Tables 6.7

and 6.8.

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Table 6.7

Benefits of being a mentor (adapted from Suedkamp Wells, Ryan, Campa, & Smith,

2005)

 

Category

Benefit

 

Personal values

sense of satisfaction; extension of contributions;
repayment of past debts from prior mentors; being
valued as a knowledgeable person

 

Social change

opportunity to promote civic engagement; increase
opportunities and access for women and minorities

 

Build professional capital

attract good people; cultivate future replacements;
transmit cultural and institutional memory

 

Career enhancement

achieve vicariously; develop professional network;
promote interdisciplinary study through multiple
mentors

 

Resource development

 

learn new skills; receive fresh perspectives on
current issues

 

 

Table 6.8

Benefits of being mentored grouped into “types” introduced by Kram (1985) (adapted
from Suedkamp Wells, Ryan, Campa, & Smith, 2005)

 

Category

Benefits

 

Psychosocial

Acceptance and confirmation, counseling, role modeling,
friendship, cooperative ability, support for stressful periods,
increased self awareness

 

Career

 

 

Sponsorship, coaching, exposure and visibility, protection,
challenging work, increased promotion rates, total compensation,
perceived career success, organizational socialization, increased
productivity, increased teaching performance

 

167

"hm -~-— —

 

Thus the majority of individual outcomes in this study are reflected in the literature on
benefits accrued to mentors and mentees in a mentoring relationship.

The one benefit that appears frequently in the data that does not appear (or is not
as emphasized) in the literature on mentoring is scholarly grants and publication. In the
present study, scholarship was the most important reason why participants got involved
in these collaborations. The early mentoring literature suggests that the mentoring
relationship “provides a variety of functions that support, guide, and counsel” a younger
colleague (Kram, p. 608, 1983). This study suggests that these benefits of mentoring may

(or may not) accrue during these intergenerational research collaborations. Thus in much

 

of the mentoring literature, the developmental nature of the relationship is foreground,
and the collaborative scholarly work is secondary. In the case of intergenerational
research collaborations, the scholarship itself is in the foreground, and the developmental
processes and outcomes of the relationship are in the background. The difference appears

to be a matter of focus — either on the relationship itself, or on the collaborative work

 

colleagues undertake together. More recently, scholars such as Sorcinelli and Yun (2007)
have proposed models that suggest the goal of multiple mentoring relationships is to
“address specific areas of faculty activity, such as research, teaching, working towards
tenure” (p. 58). This broader definition of mentoring does emphasize the importance of
“real work tasks” in the activities involved in a mentoring relationship.

More recent literature describing mentoring practices (e.g., Jacelon, Zucker,
Staccarini, & Henneman, 2003) have highlighted the potential usefulness of peer
mentoring for tenure-track faculty. The data that emerged in this study suggests that peer

mentoring may not be effective for everyone, as many of the participants spoke of their

168

comfort in collaborating with senior colleagues, and discomfort (as a result of
competitive feelings) with peers
Method — Alternative Methodological Approaches

I chose to interview 26 faculty members in this study. As this was an exploratory
study, I chose to focus on breadth of the sample, and interview faculty across 10
institutions of a similar type. I continued to interview faulty until I made the judgment
that I had saturated the breadth of possible responses. This strategy enabled me to get a
range of responses to the research questions I posed. It provided me with a bird’s eye
view of the faculty experience of intergenerational research collaborations, and a
foundation for further research. It also provided me with a more complex understanding
of the diversity that exists across research-oriented liberal arts colleges.

What this method did not allow me to do, however, was to understand faculty
experience of their collaborations within a deeper context of individual lives and
institutional histories. Instead of interviewing a saturated sample of faculty across many
institutions, I could have developed in-depth qualitative case studies (Stake, 2005) about
one faculty member on each of (for example) three to five separate campuses.

Narrative/ life history methodology (Chase, 2005) could be used to get richer data, over
time, not only about a faculty member’s experience of his or her collaboration, but about
the life and institutional contexts for this work. I could engage in multiple interviews with
faculty, spend longer periods of time at each campus, and follow the experience of
individuals in collaborations over time (e. g, an academic year).

Another methodological approach I could have taken would have involved

examining the nature of intergenerational research collaborations by engaging in textual

169

 

 

analysis of biographies and autobiographies of eminent scholars. I assume that this
approach would force me to examine these relationships across various institutional types
(instead of just focusing on research-oriented liberal arts colleges).

Finally, at the other end of the paradigmatic spectrum, this topic could be
explored by engaging in large-scale surveys of faculty in a larger number of these
research-oriented liberal arts colleges. Given the data gathered in the current study, I am
very interested in learning: (a) how common this type of collaboration is; (b) how these
collaborations vary in length, purpose, and scholarly outcome; (0) in what disciplines
intergenerational collaborations are more common; and ((1) what structural or cultural
aspects within a range of research-oriented liberal arts college serve to facilitate or inhibit
this type of work. A survey would be a vehicle with which to answer these questions.

Key Findings and Implications for Research

A long list of findings emerged from this study, each of which could be explored
in more detail. The purpose of this section is to lay out what I see as the four most
important issues to arise from this work, and some implications for future research. Those
issues include:

1. The implicit, rather than explicit, role that generational differences played

in these research collaborations;

2. The theoretical and practical relationship between intergenerational

research collaborations and mentoring;

3. Competition that early career faculty have with each other, and

implications of these feelings for performance within academic work

environments that are becoming increasingly collaborative;

170

 

4. The ways in which the results of this study might be different if
undertaken at a research institution or less endowed liberal arts college.
Implicit Role of Generational Attributes in Faculty Collaborations

One of the questions that motivated me to undertake this study was to try to
understand the role that differences in generation, as reflected in chronological age, life
stage, career stage, or intellectual generation, had on the processes and outcomes of
research collaborations. Twenty-five of 26 respondents said the research is what
motivated them to get involved in the collaboration in the first place. However,
throughout the interview, participants revealed that some of the proxies for generational
attributes that 1 established (chronological age, life stage, career stage, intellectual
generation) were salient in their collaborations with their colleagues. Almost all
individuals were able to discuss how at least one generational attribute played some role
of their scientific, social, emotional, or cognitive experience of the collaboration. If
generational differences are much more implicit than explicit in the academic workplace,
it would be important to examine the value of surfacing these differences, and scaffolding
a conversation for faculty about how these differences might play out in research
collaborations.

As was mentioned in Chapter Three, one of the limitations of this study was the
fact that some faculty talked about their experience of one collaboration in depth, while
others talked about their experience in several but with less depth. Future research on
intergenerational research teams at research-oriented liberal arts colleges should include

students, as their presence on these research teams is ubiquitous. Future research could

171

 

 

attempt to replicate this study at additional research-oriented liberal arts colleges, digging
deeper into faculty experiences in one (vs. several collaborations).
Intergenerational Research Collaborations and Mentoring

In this study, mentoring behaviors and benefits were outgrowths of the
participants’ engagement in intergenerational research collaborations. I did not use the
term mentoring in the interview protocol. Therefore it was interesting to observe that the
term was used by 18 of the 26 participants in the study. Some of the participants used the
word mentoring to describe behaviors that were enacted, or benefits that were gained, in
their relationship with their more junior or senior colleague. As I described earlier in this
chapter, these behaviors and/or outcomes reflect much of what Seudkamp Wells, Ryan,
Campa, and Smith (2005) found in a review of the literature on the benefits of mentoring
for mentors and mentees.

The term “mentoring” was used by participants to describe (a) behaviors enacted
in their relationship with their more junior or senior colleague; or (b) what the
intergenerational research collaboration was not (e. g., “. . .even though there was the
differences in age and discipline and seniority, it never felt like a mentor-mentee
relationship”).

As intergenerational research collaborations provided a context within which
mentoring took place, I would raise the question of what other types of research,
pedagogical, or service work can serve as platforms for intergenerational collaborations
within which some of the benefits of mentoring can emerge. Faculty have limited time
for lunches, retreats, and extra meetings that are often a part of traditional mentoring

programs. Research and practice have demonstrated that work that serves as the context

172

 

 

 

for mentoring must be perceived as an authentic practice by its participants (Sorcinelli,
2008). I propose the term emergent mentoring here to describe the relationships
participants described in this study because they: (a) emerged from the faculty not the
administration and (b) emerged from participation in authentic faculty work.

Future exploratory research on emergent mentoring is still needed. A future study
could investigate the experiences of faculty members who are part of the same
collaboration, along with the experiences of other individuals (e. g., undergraduate
students) on the research team. This research could be implemented by undertaking in-
depth case studies of several collaborations. Case studies could be developed about both
inter-institutional and intra-institutional collaborations.

In addition, over a third of the senior faculty in this study were either retired, in
their last year of employment, or within five years of retirement. Additional research is
needed to examine the challenges and opportunities that research collaborations between
pre-tenure faculty and senior faculty (within five years of retirement) can provide for all
parties involved. How can institutions maximize the potential value of these
collaborations to both parties, while respecting the needs and resources of the colleges?
Case studies could be undertaken to explore structural, cultural, and human resource
policies that have been implemented at institutions that either support or deter scholarly
collaborations between different generations.

Competition and Collaboration

Competition is not commonly associated with individuals involved in

collaborative work together. In fact, competition is mentioned as a potential detriment to

collaborative relationships (Gray, 1989). Several early career faculty in this study

173

 

 

mentioned that working with senior colleagues was attractive to them, as it mitigated
feelings of competition that they otherwise might feel if they were engaged in
collaborations with their peers.

The presence of this phenomenon suggests more exploratory work can be done
that explores the nature of competition within an academic workplace that is becoming
increasingly collaborative. Interesting questions about the balance of individualism and
needs of the collective in the workplace could be asked, including questions about what
aspects of institutional climate promote or discourage collaboration (or both?). What
implications do feelings of competition have for early career faculty placed in peer
mentoring programs?

Salience of Research-Oriented Liberal Arts Context

One of the goals of this study was to consider how the faculty experience at a
research-oriented liberal arts institution might be similar to or different from the
experience of faculty involved in these collaborations at other institutional types. In
comparison to research institutions, many of these research-oriented liberal arts colleges
have quite similar expectations for research output, and similar teaching loads (2-2) as the
top research universities. However, it is important to keep in mind that some of the less
prestigious research institutions have their faculty teach more than four courses a year.
Therefore, I hypothesize that the expectations for research production at research-
oriented liberal arts colleges are quite similar to the top research institutions in the
country, and significantly higher than less resourced liberal arts colleges. Unlike faculty
at research universities, faculty at research-oriented liberal arts colleges may have a wider

range of acceptable publication types that their peers at research institutions. As I

174

 

 

reported in Chapter Five, my participants produced research articles that appeared in elite
publications, articles that appeared in less known publications, academic readers, and
research reports to community organizations. When comparing the faculty experience at
research-oriented liberal arts colleges to the experiences of faculty at lesser resourced
liberal arts colleges, I believe more differences would be found (compared to research

institutions), including — much higher demands for research output and grant funding,

 

less variation in the type of publications expected, and lower teaching loads.

More empirical research is needed to compare expectations for promotion and
tenure within disciplines across institutional types. For example, it would be interesting to
determine how different the expectations for publication (quality and quantity) are for
professors in one discipline across research-oriented liberal arts institutions, lesser-
resourced liberal arts colleges, as well as research institutions. A research project might

take the form of a comparative document analysis of promotion and tenure guidelines at

 

each institution. Course load is another dimension upon which institutions could be
compared.
Recommendations for Policy and Practice
I will conclude my presentation of this study by making suggestions for future
policy and practice. These recommendations are organized by and addressed to relevant
stakeholders. Many of these recommendations would require little financial commitment

from an institution or its faculty.

175

Deans of Faculty

Recommendation One

Consider including support for intergenerational research collaborations in a
college’s long term academic human resource planning. The data in this study suggest
that both junior and senior faculty can benefit from such collaborations. However, the
data also included examples of junior faculty who did not get tenure as a (direct or
indirect) result of participation in this collaborative work. Deans of Faculty might benefit
from trying to learn how common, and how effective, these relationships have been on
their own campuses. They might use these contextually rich findings to make decisions
about providing institutional support or finding external funding for such efforts.
Recommendation Two

If an assessment suggested in the previous recommendation shows the presence of
or interest in these research collaborations, Deans of Faculty might consider sponsoring
faculty development workshops to make generational issues explicit. They might educate
both more seasoned as well as more junior faculty about the potential benefits of these
collaborations, while also pointing out potential problems that can occur.
Recommendation Three

Clarify promotion and tenure guidelines around collaborative and
interdisciplinary work. At the same time collaborative and interdisciplinary work are
growing in popularity, research standards for promotion and tenure are getting more strict
at research-oriented liberal arts colleges; greater scrutiny of collaborative work may be a
part of this trend. Clarifying promotion and tenure guidelines may be important. This

recommendation stems from some of the data in this study that suggest the junior faculty

176

 

 

 

member’s contribution to a collaboration with a senior faculty member will often be seen
as the work of the senior person.
Department Chairs and Senior Faculty

Recommendation Four

Reconsider the broader goals of the faculty recruitment process. Provide
opportunities for faculty being recruited to connect with faculty in the hiring department
and encourage the applicant to request meetings with specific faculty at the college
whose research looks interesting to them. This, of course, is more realistic at a liberal arts
college where the number of faculty is quite small and therefore it may be easy for
faculty to become acquainted. Encourage current faculty members to request special
meetings with candidates if they are particularly interested in the candidates’ research
interests and/or skills. This recommendation is based upon the data in this study that
showed how some of these intergenerational research collaborations (or at least
conversations about mutual interests) started during the recruitment process.
Recommendation Five

Consider benefits as well as challenges to chairs and/or senior faculty engaging in
collaborations with a junior member in the same department. Chairs should monitor
implications of being a collaborative partner to a junior faculty member whom they will
eventually be formally in charge of evaluating. As was apparent in Saleem’s experience
as reported in this study, poor performance in an intergenerational research collaboration
with one’s chair can result in negative employment outcomes. Initiate a conversation,

prior to collaborating on research, about how joint contributions will be formally assessed

177

 

 

and informally perceived on the campus. Make individual needs for authorship on
intellectual products explicit.
Junior F aculty/Prospective Junior Faculty

Recommendation Six

Prospective faculty should research institutions to which they are applying, asking
to meet with people on campus with mutual interests. Also, current and prospective
faculty might research other colleges in the area to determine if there are other faculty in
the region with whom collaborative opportunities might be explored. This
recommendation stems from the experiences of several junior faculty members in this
study who began talking about mutual interests with senior collaborators during the
interview process. Several other faculty members in this study engaged in productive
collaborations with faculty at other nearby liberal arts colleges.
Recommendation Seven

Study institutional policies regarding promotion and tenure to determine how
collaborative work is valued, if at all. Conversations with a participant in this study
revealed some disparity between the espoused value placed upon scholarly
(interdisciplinary) collaboration, and how individual faculty members were actually
credited for that work.

Graduate Deans

Recommendation Eight

Educate prospective faculty about the variety of institutional types in which they
could find themselves employed, providing information on different cultural and

structural differences that characterize each type of institution. This recommendation has

178

 

 

 

been made by scholars researching best practices in doctoral education (Austin, 2002a,
2002b; Austin & McDaniels, 2006). Providing this information to doctoral students could
make them aware of differences that exist between the academic work environment in
which they have been trained and the one where they eventually work.
Recommendation Nine

Talk to graduate students about the most effective way to bring undergraduates
onto research projects. This knowledge may benefit doctoral students regardless of the
type of institution at which they are considering applying for faculty positions. The data
in this study clearly showed the important role that undergraduate students play in the
research projects of the faculty at research-oriented liberal arts colleges. As was evident
in the experiences of faculty members in this study, not all faculty are used to mentoring
undergraduate students and confronting issues that arise in their work with this
population.

Concluding Thoughts

The findings from this study suggest that the intergenerational research
collaboration is a social phenomenon ripe for future research and consideration by
individuals concerned about faculty development at research-oriented liberal arts
colleges. To examine the nature of intergenerational research collaborations, it is
important to consider how individual attributes and contextual factors influence
collaborative processes that eventually lead to a set of outcomes for faculty collaborators.
Future work examining institutional outcomes will complement this developing area of

research.

179

 

 

 

APPENDIX A

E-MAIL TO PROVOSTS/DEANS OF FACULTY

Dear [Provost/ Dean of Faculty]:

As a part of the requirements for the completion of my doctorate in the program in Higher, Adult,
& Lifelong Education at Michigan State University, I am undertaking a study to learn more about
the experience of faculty at research-intensive liberal arts colleges who have been or are engaged
in research/scholarly collaborations. Specifically, I am interested in having a conversation with
faculty who are (or have been) a part of what I am calling an “intergenerational research team”. I
use this term to refer to research between or among people of two or more career ages (e.g. pre-
tenure/post-tenure), chronological ages, and/or intellectual generations (e.g. people trained in the
same field in eras during which different paradigms were prominent).

Because of the active research being undertaken by your faculty, I wanted to contact you to see if
you might be able to recommend any faculty members whom I might contact about participating
in this project. I would send an introductory e-mail to the faculty member, to be followed by what
I hope would be a short phone conversation. If an individual agrees to participate in the study, I
would request a 90-minute in-person interview with me. I would of course come to your campus
to conduct these interviews.

I will call your office within the next week to see if we might be able to arrange a time to speak
on the phone. In such a conversation, I would answer any questions you may have about my
study, and to see ifyou would be able to recommend any faculty 1 might speak with. I recognize
how busy you are and would appreciate any ideas you might have.

Ifyou would like to contact me directly, I can be reached by email at mcdani73’almsuedu. You
are also welcome to contact my dissertation chair, Dr. Ann Austin, at aaustinr’agmsuedu with any
questions.

 

 

I hope to speak with you soon.

Sincerely,

Melissa McDaniels

Doctoral Candidate

Higher, Adult & Lifelong Education
College of Education

Michigan State University

180

 

 

 

APPENDIX B

E-MAIL TO FACULTY MEMBERS

Dear [Faculty Member]:
I am contacting you today at the suggestion of [Provost or Dean of Faculty] at [Institution].

As a part of the requirements for the completion of my doctorate in Higher, Adult and Lifelong
Education at Michigan State University, I am undertaking a study about the experience of faculty
at research-intensive liberal arts colleges who have or are engaged in research collaborations.
[Provost or Dean of Faculty] mentioned that you were involved in several scholarly
collaborations with colleagues, and suggested I contact you to see if you would be interested in
participating.

Specifically, I am interested in having a conversation with faculty who are (or have been) a part
of what I am calling an “intergenerational research team”. I use this term to refer to research
between or among people of two or more career ages (e.g. pre-tenure/post-tenure), chronological
ages, and/or intellectual generations (e.g. people trained in the same field in eras during which
different paradigms were prominent).

I wanted to know if you might be willing to have an initial phone conversation with me to learn
more about the study. If you chose to be involved, I would like to interview you for 90 minutes at
a mutually convenient time on your campus. I recognize how busy you must be, and would aim to
make your participation as convenient as possible.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.
Ifyou would like to contact me directly, I can be reached by email at mcdani73z’t’imsuedu. If you

have any questions or concerns, you are also welcome to contact my dissertation chair, Dr. Ann
Austin, at aaustinfgiimsuedu with any questions.

 

I hope to speak with you soon.

Sincerely,

Melissa McDaniels

Doctoral Candidate

Higher, Adult & Lifelong Education
College of Education

Michigan State University

181

 

 

 

APPENDIX C
INFORMED CONSENT FORM
Project Title
An examination of the experience of faculty in intergenerational research collaborations.

Purpose of Study

 

In this study, the investigator is interested in how intergenerational research/scholarly
collaborations are experienced by and impact faculty development. The term “intergenerational”
is used to describe research between or among people of two or more career ages, chronological
ages, and/or intellectual generations.

 

The project will help us understand how participation in intergenerational research collaborations
impact the morejunior as well as more senior members. More specifically, this project will help
us understand:

0 how individuals get involved in these collaborations;

0 what the more important or salient aspects of the experience are for faculty participants;

0 what impact these collaborations have on scholarly and personal outcomes for the faculty
participants.

Estimate of Participant’s Time

One 90-minute interview at faculty member’s campus.

Privacy

This study is completely voluntary. You have the right to refuse to participate and you are free to
withdraw your participation at any time without penalty. If you withdraw, all data collected from
you will be destroyed. Additionally, you may choose to not answer some or any questions. You
are welcome to contact the investigator at any time after the interview if you have any additional
information to add, or changes you would like to make to your responses. When the study is
complete, the audio recording of our conversation will be destroyed. The investigator will protect
your privacy to the maximum extent allowable by law. We do not anticipate any risks to you as a
result of your participation in the study.

The interview will be audio-recorded and the investigator will also take notes. The investigator
will label the recorded interviews using a numerical coding system, and will report any data
utilizing a pseudonym (that you will choose).

Your name, institution and/or any other identifiable information will be omitted. The investigator

will keep all information in a secure cabinet. The investigator will be the only person along with
the investigator’s dissertation advisor with access to the interviews.

182

 

 

 

Ifyou have questions about the study. contact:

Dr. Ann E. Austin Melissa McDaniels

Primary Investigator Secondary Investigator

417 Erickson Hall 210 Erickson Hall

Michigan State University Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI 48824 East Lansing, MI 48824

(517) 355-6757 or aaustin@msu.edu (517) 349-0797 or mcdani73@msu.edu

In case you have questions or concerns about your rights as a research participant, please feel free
to contact Peter Vasilenko, Ph.D., Michigan State University's director of Human Research
Protection Programs, by phone: (517) 355-2180, fax: (517) 432-4503, email: irb@msu.edu, or
regular mail: 202 Olds Hall, East Lansing, MI 48824.

Based on the information provided above, you agree to participate in the project

“An examination of the experience of faculty in intergenerational research collaborations”
conducted by Melissa McDaniels and supervised by Dr. Ann E. Austin. Participation in this study
involves one interview. Please note that the researcher (Melissa McDaniels) may

contact you at a later time ifthere is a need to clarify any responses.

Please indicate:
I am willing to be audio-recorded yes no

Printed Name of Participant:

 

(Please print)

I agree to participate

 

Signature Date

Please note that your signature indicates that you freely agree to be part ofthe
study.

183

 

 

 

APPENDIX D

PA RTICIPANT IN FORMATION FORM

Personal Information

Participant Name:

 

Faculty Rank:

 

Institution:

 

Department:

 

Address:
(for correspondence
related to this snidy)

 

 

Phone Number:

 

 

E-mail Address:

 

Web-site:

 

Date of Birth:

 

Educational Histcly

Year received doctorate:

 

Field of doctorate:

 

Doctoral Institution:

 

Undergraduate Degree:

Year

 

Major

 

Institution

 

In what year did you begin your career as a tenure-track faculty member?

Employment History

First year as a tenure-track professor:

 

Institution

 

First year as a tenure track/tenured
faculty at this institution:

 

184

 

 

Full-time employment outside
academia

Years

 

Type of Position

 

Years

 

Type of Position

 

Years

 

Type of Position

 

Investigator notes:

Recent CV?
Other artifacts of participation in collaboration?

185

Yes/No
Yes/No

 

 

 

APPENDIX E
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL

NOTE: The interview protocol below identifies the primary interview questions for this study.
Since this is a qualitative study. there might be minor adjustments made to the questions based
upon theflow of the interview.

Participant (pseudonym)
Place:
Time:
Date:

 

 

 

 

Once again, thank you for volunteering to be a part of this project.

As you know, I am interested in learning more about your experience as a faculty member at a
research-intensive liberal arts college. In particular, I am interested in your experience as a
researcher at your institution, as someone who has engaged in collaborative research with another
faculty member who is of a different career age. chronologicgfl age or intellectuzigeneration from
yourself.

There are no right or wrong answers to any of the questions I pose. I encourage you to be as
honest and candid as you can when responding to the questions. You are free to stop the interview
at any time.

I promise to ensure you complete confidentiality. Other than myself, no one will have access to
your responses except for my dissertation advisor. The pseudonym you selected will be used in
place of your name. I will change the name of your institution, as well as any other potentially
identifying information. You are welcome to contact me at any time after the interview if you
have any additional information to add, or changes you would like to make to your responses.
When the study is complete, I will destroy the audio recording of our conversation.

This interview will take approximately 90 minutes. You may ask any questions regarding the
research, and they will be answered fully. Results from this study will be reported in the
investigator’s doctoral dissertation, presented at educational conferences and submitted for
publication. I appreciate your time and valuable input.

Do you have any questions before we begin?

Description of Collaboration

1. To get started, please tell me a little bit more about the collaboration.

Prompts:

0 With whom did you collaborate?

0 In your own words, how would you compare yourself to this person in terms of
career age, chronological age or intellectual generation? Did this difference play
any role in your motivation or consideration to get involved in this collaboration?

186

 

 

0 How did you happen to begin this collaboration?
0 What was the focus of the research?
0 How long have you been working together on this project?
° Did either of you have special roles?
Kev Moments of the Collboration

2. Were there key moments that defined the collaboration and/or impacted you?

Prompts:

' Are there any moments that stand out to you?

0 What activities were involved?

' Did you encounter any surprises?

° Did you experience the collaboration in phases or stages?
Challenges to the Collaboration

3. What challenges did you face, if any, in this collaboration?

Prompts:

' What types of challenges did you face?
0 How did these challenges impact your experience of the collaboration?

Impacts ofthe Collaboration on Faculty Member
4. What impact did your participation in this collaboration have, if any, on your:
0 Academic work (teaching? research/scholarship? service? outreach?)
' Academic work environment (department? institution? discipline?)
0 Career (satisfaction? motivation? creativity?)
° Personal/non-work life
0 Other
Impact of Intergenerational Characteristics of the Collaboration
5. Did the intergenerational nature of the collaboration make a difference in terms of the

experience or impact? If so, how? If not, could you explain why you think it did not make
a difference?

187

 

 

 

DRAWING EXERCISE

One of the other goals of this study is to investigate what metaphors faculty use to

describe the impact of these collaborations on them. A number of educational researchers have
experimented with a technique called “picture making” (Patton, 1981) where they ask participants
to draw images of what they think pictorially represents the ideas they are discussing. This
method has been found to be beneficial in that it allows respondents to communicate their
perceptions in a different form. Would you mind taking a few minutes to draw images that you
see as depicting the impact of your participation in this collaboration on you as a faculty member?

 

188

APPENDIX F

 

 

 

{macrosystem} [exosystem ] [ mesosystem ]

[ microsystem] [ tension ]
I ‘I
“

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dept

  
  

Faculty

luau-o...“ nu.

’\
'-

Figure 6.1 Bronfenbrenner ’s Nested Environmental Contexts

189

APPENDIX G

Participant Information, Number & Type of Collaboration(s), & Collaborator Information

 

Participant Information

Type of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Informant?

 

 

Name (junior or senior role)

# of collaborations

 

' inter-disciplinary or
intra-disciplinary

° inter-institutional or
intra-institutional

 

° Approximate age
difference vis-a-vis
participant

' Gender

° title (at start/now)

' other

 

 

Participant Information

Type of Collaborations(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Anachem (junior)

2 collaborations

 

 

#l : #1 :
° inter-disciplinary ° Doolittle
° intra-institutional (participant)
' ~20 years older
' male
' full professor
#2: #2:
° intra-disciplinary ' male

inter-institutional

 

° more senior in
career and older

 

 

Participant Information

Type of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Andrew (junior)

1 collaboration

 

° intra-disciplinary
° intra-institutional

 

' ~10-15 years older
0 male
° associate professor

 

 

' To the extent known

190

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Participant Information

Type of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Harpy: (senior)

2 collaborations

#1:

° intra-disciplinary
° inter-institutional

#1:

° ~20 years younger
' Korean-born male
° post-doctoral fellow

 

 

#2:

° intra-disciplinary
° inter-institutional

 

#2:

0 ~20 years younger
° male
° post-doctoral fellow

 

 

Participant Information

Type of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

Callithrix: (senior)

l collaboration

0 inter-disciplinary
' intra-institutional

' ~15-20 yrs younger
' female
° associate professor

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

Cassandra: (junior)

l collaboration

° inter-disciplinary
° intra-institutional

Gary (participant)
Caucasian male
~20 years older
professor/professor
emeritus

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Clara: (junior)

1 collaboration

 

° intra-disciplinary
' inter-institutional

 

° Caucasian
° European male
° ~ 10-15 years older

 

191

 

 

 

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Doc: (junior)

3 collaborations

 

#1:
' intra-disciplinary
° inter-institutional

#2:
' intra-disciplinary
' inter-institutional

#3:
° intra-disciplinary
' inter-institutional

 

#1:
° male
° ~10 years older
' same dissertation
advisor

#2:
' male
° ~20 years older
' scientist @ company

#3:
° male

° at least 10 years
older (“regarded”)

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

Doolittle: (senior)

1 collaboration

° Intra-disciplinary
' Intra-institutional

° Saleem (participant)
° African American
(from South Africa)
0 ~20 years younger
' assistant professor/
no tenure

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Elisa: (senior)

2 collaborations

 

#1 :
° inter-disciplinary
' intra-institutional

#2:
' intra-disciplinary
° inter-institutional

 

#1:
0 male
° ~20 years younger
° assistant professor

#2:
0 female
° ~20 years younger
' assistant professor

 

192

 

 

 

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

Ellen: (senior)

1 collaboration

° Inter-disciplinary

° Inna-institutional (to
start) then inter-
institutional
(colleague moved to
a research
institution)

° male
° younger
° assistant professor

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Gareth (senior)

2 collaborations

 

#1
° Intra-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

#2
' Inter-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

 

#1:
° male
° ~10 years younger
° assistant professor

#2:
° female
° ~15 years younger
° provost

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Gag (senior)

1 collaboration

 

#1
° Inter-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

 

#1:
° Cassandra
(participant)
° Caucasian female
' ~30 years younger

 

193

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

Hank (senior)

2 collaborations

 

#1
' Inter-disciplinary
° lntra-institutional

#2
' Intra-disciplinary
' Intra-institutional

 

#1:
0 Tiffany (participant)
° Caucasian female
° ~20 years younger

#2:
° ~20 years younger
0 female

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

Hannah (junior)

2 collaborations

 

#1
° Intra-disciplinary
° Inter-institutional

#2
° Intra-disciplinary
' Inter-institutional

 

#1 :
° female
' ~20 years older
° full professor

#2:
' male
' ~20 years older
' full professor

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Julia (junior)

1 collaboration

 

° Intra-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

 

male

~30-40 years older
same department
professor/professor
emeritus

 

 

194

 

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Larr_'y (senior)

4 collaborations

 

#1
' Intra-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

#2
' Intra-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

#3
° Intra-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

#4
° Intra-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

 

#1:

Mambi (participant)
Caucasian male

~25 years younger
assistant/associate
same department

#2:

female

~30 years younger
assistant

same department

#3

male

~35 years younger
assistant

same department

#4

female

~30 years younger
assistant

same department

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Mambi (junior)

l collaboration

 

° Intra-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

 

' Larry (participant)
° Caucasian male

° ~25 years older

° same department

' professor

 

I95

 

 

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Parker (senior)

2 collaborations

 

#1
° Intra-disciplinary
° Inter-institutional

#2
° Intra-disciplinary
° Inter-institutional

 

#1 :
0 male
' significantly
younger
' physical science
° post-doc then
assistant professor

#2:
° female
° ~30-40 years
younger
° post-doc

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

Ruby (junior)

l collaboration

° Intra-disciplinary
' Inter-institutional

° male
° ~20—30 years older
° full professor

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Saleem (junior)

1 collaboration

 

' Intra-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

 

° Doolittle
(participant)

° Caucasian male

' ~20 years older

' full professor and
chair

0 same department

 

196

 

 

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Sevren (senior)

1 collaboration

 

° Intra-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

 

Indian male

~10 years younger
assistant professor
same department
leaving institution

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

Sorenson (senior/junior)

2 collaborations

#1
° Intra-disciplinary
' Intra-institutional

#2
' Intra-disciplinary
° Inter-institutional

#1 :
° female
° ~20-30 years older
° associate/ full
professor

#2:
0 male
° ~10 years younger
° assistant professor

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Spike (junior)

2 collaborations

 

#1
° Intra-disciplinary
° Inter-institutional

#2
' Intra-disciplinary
° Inter-institutional

 

#1:
° male
' ~20-30 years older
' Professor — “a
luminary”

#2:
° male
' ~20-30 years older
° full professor

 

 

197

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Tiffany (junior)

l collaboration

 

' Inter-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

 

Hank (participant)
~20 years older
professor

former provost

 

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

Tim (junior)

1 collaboration

° Inter-disciplinary
' Intra-institutional

0 ~20 years older
° female
° professor

 

 

Participant Information

Types of Collaboration(s)

Collaborator Information

 

 

Wanda (senior)

1 collaboration

 

° Intra-disciplinary
° Intra-institutional

 

° ~20 years younger

° male

° assistant
professor/associate
professor

 

 

Table 4.11 Participant Collaborations

198

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199

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