HRD--An Organizing Approach to Faculty Development.

Abstract

The importance of faculty development is clearly rec gnized in many colleges and universiti s. Even with widespread support for the notion, there is little consensus as to the locus of responsibility for such pro grams, appropriate size of the investment, or whether such activities should be related to the institutional mis sion. Given the demographic characteristics of most faculties and the labor intensive nature of higher educa tion, faculty development opportunities appear to be a critical institutional responsibility. Ways need to be found to organize such programs to increase responsiveness to both individual faculty and institutional needs. One fears that, especially in times of limited resources, ill-defined programs may become easy targets for fiscal reversions and low priority. The purpose of this paper is to describe and critique a col legewide faculty development program organized around human resource development (HRD) concepts.