Expectations, Challenges, and Motivations for Early Career Faculty Who Transitioned from Industry to Academia: A Literature Review

9 pages•Published: June 9, 2021

Contina McCall, Wesley Collins, Salman Azhar and Kasia Leousis

Abstract

Industry experience is desired by construction management education program chairs and advisory boards and required by the construction management accreditation board. This paper based on extensive literature review explores the expectations, challenges, and motivations for early career faculty who transitioned from private industry to academia. New faculty are expected to understand how to teach, be prepared to research and publish academic work, and be oriented to academe. New academics face various challenges in the early transitional years such as a lower starting position, lower starting salaries than in industry, removal from hands-on practice, doctoral degree requirements, and stress and heavy workloads. However, practitioners are also motivated to decide to make the move to academia by factors such as a second career after retirement, having a calling to teach, wanting a better work-life balance, and giving back to education. As universities are challenged to hire faculty with industry experience, administrators must be aware of the expectations, challenges, and motivations facing new faculty from industry. The existing literature regarding factors for transitioning to academia seem to be limited, particularly regarding the construction industry. Future research will seek to develop a set of training resources for early career construction management faculty that have transitioned from industry.

Keyphrases: academia, challenges, industry, motivations, transition

In: Tom Leathem, Anthony Perrenoud and Wesley Collins (editors). ASC 2021. 57th Annual Associated Schools of Construction International Conference, vol 2, pages 542-550.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/2Fzv
	https://doi.org/10.29007/4jx7

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{ASC2021:Expectations_Challenges_Motivations_Early,
  author    = {Contina McCall and Wesley Collins and Salman Azhar and Kasia Leousis},
  title     = {Expectations, Challenges, and Motivations for Early Career Faculty Who Transitioned from Industry to Academia:  A Literature Review},
  booktitle = {ASC 2021. 57th Annual Associated Schools of Construction International Conference},
  editor    = {Tom Leathem and Anthony Perrenoud and Wesley Collins},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Built Environment},
  volume    = {2},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2632-881X},
  url       = {/publications/paper/2Fzv},
  doi       = {10.29007/4jx7},
  pages     = {542-550},
  year      = {2021}}

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