Identifying the needs of new faculty in higher education

Institutions of higher education can benefit from identifying the academic, financial, professional, and social needs of their new faculty members. Although new faculty members in higher education may have impressive educational and professional credentials, many of them may have difficulty understanding and fulfilling their new roles and becoming acclimated to their new professional environment because their needs are not addressed properly (A. Aypay, 2001). If institutions fail to identify and address the needs of new faculty members in higher education, the result could include higher faculty turnover rates and poor student performance in the classroom. The consequences could also be detrimental to certain disciplines as new faculty members leave education altogether because their academic, financial, professional, and social needs were not adequately addressed. In order to be a successful educator, new faculty members in higher education need to be familiar with the new campus, new colleagues, new roles, expectations, and the overall environment of a higher educational setting. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative study was to identify the academic, financial, professional, and social needs and challenges of new faculty in higher education and to discover how institutions of higher education are meeting those needs. This study sought to test Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs by relating it to the needs of the new faculty at a small, private, liberal arts college. Recommendations are made for institutions of higher education based on the results and findings of the study.