Framing Faculty Agency Inside Striving Universities an Application of Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice

Framing Faculty Agency Inside Striving Universities: An Applicationof Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice

Leslie D. Gonzales

The Journal of Higher Education, Volume 85, Number 2, March/April2014, pp. 193-218 (Article)

Published by The Ohio State University PressDOI: 10.1353/jhe.2014.0011

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Drawn from a qualitative study and framed with Bourdieu’s theory of practice, I present a three-pronged framework to describe how tenure-line professors assumed agency as their university strove to establish itself as a national research institution. Implications for practice and future research are offered.

According to Ruef and Nag (2011), differentiation in the field of U.S. higher education “distinguish[es] the traditional ‘elite’ universities, such as harvard, princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, and the like, while en-couraging systemic expansion—and greater access—at lower levels of post-secondary education” (e.g., comprehensive universities; p. 1). most consider this differentiated approach as one of most enduring, im-pressive features of U.S. higher education since it provides multiple ac-cess points to an increasingly large and diverse student body. however, scholars consistently show that differentiation is not well accepted in the higher education field. Colleges and universities consistently strive to reposition themselves (Brint, Riddle, & hanneman, 2006; morphew, 2009; o’meara, 2007; tuchman, 2009), which led toma (2009) to write:

Framing Faculty Agency inside striving Universities: An Application of Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice

Leslie D. Gonzales is Assistant Professor of Higher Education–Educational Leadership at Clemson University; [email protected].

Leslie d. gonzales

The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 85, no. 2 (march/April)copyright © 2014 by the ohio State University

194 The Journal of Higher Education

[Universities] are eerily similar in vision . . . seemingly obsessed with “mov-ing to the next level.” institutions seek to become more like those directly above them on the prestige hierarchy recognized within American higher education. (p. 1)

For decades, researchers have examined the roots and impacts of such upward aspiration (Bastedo & Bowman, 2010, 2011; Brint et al., 2006; morphew, 2009; morphew & Baker, 2004), which o’meara (2007) calls “striving.” According to o’meara, striving universities tend to revise practices, policies, and sometimes entire academic missions in order to climb the “academic hierarchy” (O’Meara, 2007). Specifically, O’Meara noted that striving universities usually make changes to five operational areas: 1) admissions, 2) faculty recruitment and rewards, 3) resource al-location, 4) program/curriculum, and 5) public relations.

it seems evident that striving universities present complex contexts for all university constituents—and especially for faculty members whose work is directly impacted by each of the changes outlined in o’meara’s work. For example, gardner (2010, 2011) illustrated how one striving university increased research demands, while wolf-wendel and ward (2005) offered a similar analysis and noted the marginalizing effect that striving can yield on female faculty members who juggle the labors of home and university. meanwhile, o’meara and Bloomgarden (2011) studied a striving liberal arts college and showed that faculty associated striving with their college’s incessant desire for prestige ac-quisition; the same was argued by Rusch and wilbur (2007) when they studied a striving business school. Beyond these and a few other stud-ies, there is limited research that has investigated how faculty members understand, experience, and/or react to striving university contexts. perhaps the lack of attention to faculty experiences inside striving uni-versities is due to the fact that the literature on faculty careers tends to be focused on professors who already work in elite research universi-ties or because much of the research on faculty is anchored in struc-tural and meso-level theories where faculty are not viewed as agents capable of steering and crafting their careers against the pressures of the political economy, the field, or organizational work sites.

however, this article, which is derived from a larger project, assumes an agentic view of faculty work life. As such, the paramount intent of this work is to describe, through the provision of a framework, how a group of faculty took action in response to their striving university context. the larger project, from which this article is drawn, was fo-cused on two overarching questions—how faculty made sense of and how faculty responded to their striving university context. in previous

Framing Faculty Agency in Striving Universities 195

works, i have focused explicitly on the faculty sense-making process (gonzales, 2013) and in another article, i focused on one particular fac-ulty response, which i argued was “likely to render a very different ap-proach to faculty work and roles at [the] university” (gonzales, 2012, p. 4).

in this article, i add to this previous work to offer a comparative dis-cussion of the various ways that faculty responded to their striving uni-versity. By adding this fuller discussion of faculty responses, this ar-ticle makes two distinct contributions to the literature on faculty experi-ences inside striving universities. First, by setting faculty responses in a framework, the relational aspects of this phenomenon are illuminated. when different forms of faculty responses are set side by side, it be-comes clear that striving might lead to tensions among a university’s faculty. Secondly, i show how faculty responses are very much inter-twined with faculty member’s personal history or habitus (Bourdieu, 1983, 1988). Finally, this article offers a timely contribution because higher education scholars seem to be increasingly interested in high-lighting that it is possible to craft an academic career that suits one’s as-pirations and sensibilities (delgado-Bernal, 2007; houston, 2000; kahn, 2009; o’meara & campbell, 2011). in the next section, i set up this article by reviewing relevant literature.

Literature Review

Faculty are expected to teach, conduct and disseminate research, write and obtain grant funding, and engage in different forms of service in ways that reflect their particular university’s mission (Eddy & Hart, 2012). For example, faculty who work in comprehensive universities can expect to teach at least three undergraduate courses and perhaps one master’s level course per semester (clark, 1978). they should also ex-pect that service to the community will be important to the university (henderson, 2007). on the other hand, in nationally renowned research universities, faculty should expect to conduct and disseminate scholarly work, contribute to graduate education, and serve in (inter)nationally prominent roles (Veysey, 1965).

Although mission differentiation was adopted as a strategy to encour-age access along a continuum as well as a differential approach to fac-ulty work in terms of time/resources spent on teaching, research, and service, it has bred hierarchy (davies & zarifa, 2012; toma, 2012). Researchers have shown that universities and colleges with teaching and service missions consistently attempt to reshape those missions into a stronger research focus. Such mission transformations have been


referred to as academic mission drift (clark, 1978), mission creep (gon-zales, 2012; longanecker, 2008; morphew, 2009), or, as noted above, striving (o’meara, 2007).

Striving represents a greater multidimensional shift in university be-havior than academic mission creep. Specifically, O’Meara reviewed extensive literature and distilled five typical behaviors among striv-ing universities. She noted how these typical operational changes align with criteria commonly used by ranking bodies. For example, o’meara pointed out that striving universities tend to adjust admission and se-lections processes to be more selective and invest in public imaging campaigns, including the building of nonacademic, leisure amenities. She also found that striving universities invest in the recruitment and rewarding of research-focused professors and develop research-re-lated infrastructure (also see morphew & Baker, 2004). Although most scholars attribute striving to the higher education field’s obsession with cultural resources, like prestige and legitimacy (Bastedo & Bow-man, 2011; gonzales, 2012, 2013; morphew, 2009; toma, 2012; tuch-man, 2009), recent scholarship by leslie, Slaughter, taylor, and zhang (2012) and pusser and marginson (2012) suggests that the acquisition of cultural resources is inextricably intertwined with the need for uni-versities to replace fiscal resources that the state no longer provides. In other words, university leaders probably assume that the acquisition of cultural resources will facilitate the acquisition of other monies (e.g., grant funds, endowments, tuition dollars from students that can pay).

of the few studies that have examined the impact of striving on fac-ulty, one study showed that the intent-to-leave increased among women (gardner, 2011). gardner attributed the increased intent-to-leave to the demand for more research, the simultaneous lack of university re-sources, and the fact that women felt split between the labors of home and the labors of the university. on the other hand, Rusch and wil-bur (2007) showed how some faculty in one striving college reformu-lated the approach to their career in order to keep up with the changing expectations of their work site. Rusch and wilbur relied on insights from institutional theory and suggested that these faculty worked hard not only to cope with new expectations but also to obtain the legiti-macy necessary to be accepted as an academic operating in a new, more research-focused sector of higher education. Additionally, tuch-man (2009) studied a striving university and found that many profes-sors ignored the university’s aspirations. the work of Rusch and wil-bur (2007) and tuchman (2009) highlights that faculty can be and are agentic in their careers.


yet, it is important to note that the ability, or perhaps the range of agency, that one can mobilize is constrained and enabled by various factors (o’meara & campbell, 2011). For example, tenure status, gen-der, racial/ethnic status, and even discipline are key issues to consider in a study of faculty agency. with regard to tenure status, extant re-search has shown that most professors associate the tenure process with ambiguity and micro-politics (delgado-Bernal & Villalpando, 2002; o’meara, 2002; Rhoades, 2009) and inside striving (changing) con-texts, scholars have shown that tenure is made more complex: Research productivity expectations rise (gardner, 2011); evaluation of publica-tion becomes more rigid; and broader, rather than local, contributions become more important (Rusch & wilbur, 2007). to this point, work by wolf-wendel and ward (2006) and ward and wolf-wendel (2003) has documented how women, who largely remain responsible for the management of familial/household matters, struggle to keep pace with the expanding expectations attached to faculty work in striving uni-versities. moreover, when it comes to scholars from underrepresented backgrounds, there is evidence that their scholarship is subjected to un-fair, more skeptical reviews, which can become more pronounced when the measures of quality become narrower, as in the case of striving universities. For example, several times researchers have shown that scholars of color often have a research agenda that addresses their com-munity (Baez, 2000; delgado-Bernal & Villalpando, 2002; núñez, mu-rakami-Ramalho, & cuero, 2010). Just as often, scholars have shown that such work is marginalized for falling outside of academic norms and the traditional academic cannon (delgado-Bernal & Villalpando, 2002; Stanley, 2007; turner, gonzález, & wong, 2011). even when scholars of color do not maintain an agenda focused on their commu-nity, researchers have consistently shown how their work is subjected to a more rigorous evaluation, often due to skepticism regarding their fit in academia (see Gonzales, Núñez, & Murakami, 2013; Niemann, 1999). Relatedly, turner (2002) explained that she and other women of color are asked to carry out more service work than others and that it is assumed that they should be/can be/are the best at serving all students of color. in the context of a university that aims to increase its research profile and related activities, these already complex challenges can be-come even more difficult.

the review of literature, thus far, illustrates that although higher edu-cation was originally intended as a system with differentiated organiza-tions, universities tend to refuse their position on the academic hierar-chy. Scholars tend to agree that this is because of the insatiable desire


for cultural resources in the higher education field and the interrelated need to raise fiscal resources (Pusser & Marginson, 2012). Furthermore, o’meara’s (2007) work highlights how striving universities re-craft themselves as more selective, more research-oriented kinds of places, while the literature on the academic profession suggests that striving contexts can yield differential experiences and outcomes for faculty on the basis of identity markers, including tenure-status, gender, race/ ethnicity, and others. consequently, the literature provided the basis for my selection of pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice as an analytical lens for this study. As i show below, Bourdieu (1983, 1988) conceptual-ized humans as agents with storied pasts that inform their views of the world and the kinds of actions that they take to navigate it.

Theoretical Framework

Anchoring this study are assumptions about the ability and potential for humans to act as agents within and against the context of cultural and structural pressures. this means that i began the study from the per-spective that faculty can be agentic in their careers, that one can work through and negotiate “structure” rather than being determined by it. to this point, in this article, agency is considered concrete actions or practices that faculty employ in order to earn or maintain a space of legitimacy within academia. Such space provides the basis for faculty to engage in the work of academia (e.g., teaching, learning, creating and sharing knowledge, interacting with the next generation of scholars). Because studies of agency present the risk of displaying actors as he-roic characters or gifted and calculated entrepreneurs, i needed a theory to help me account for the broader and deeper structural context that shapes faculty experiences. As such, Bourdieu presented a viable per-spective. As i show, Bourdieu’s (1983, 1998) work was committed to exploring the convergence of agents with structure and culture.

Bourdieu’s theory of practice consists of the following key concepts: field, habitus, capital, and agent/agency. The word habitus might be swapped for personal history or biography. Additionally, Bourdieu in-terchangeably referred to agency as “practice,” “action,” or even “strug-gle.” in this work, agency is used interchangeably with any of Bour-dieu’s referents or with the word response. next i discuss the meaning of these concepts.

Field

the concept field helps the researcher situate individuals in the mi-lieu of social and objective relations. Bourdieu (1983) defined field as “a


space in which a game takes place . . . a field of objective relations be-tween individuals or institutions who are competing for the same stake” (p. 197). of academia, Bourdieu (1988) wrote:

The university field, is like any other field, [in that] the locus of struggle is to determine the conditions and the criteria of legitimate membership and legiti-mate hierarchy, that is, to determine which properties are pertinent, effective, and liable to function as capital. (p. 14)

For this study, i conceive of higher education/academia as a multi-dimensional field made up of the academic profession, the disciplines, universities as work sites, and accreditation/evaluative bodies. inside these fields are individuals, including professors, who want to define the stakes that determine legitimate membership in academia. in other words, the struggle in this field is about what makes an academic an academic in the first place. To this point, Bourdieu (1983) stated, “It is true that every literary field is the site of a struggle over the definition of the writer” (p. 42).

Scholars have written about the assignment or the processes related to legitimization in academia (gonzales, 2012; lamont, 2009; powell & colyvas, 2008; Rusch & wilbur, 2007; Stanley, 2007), and there is general agreement that legitimacy is awarded on the basis of “institu-tionalized scripts” (posecznick, 2013). Based on empirical higher edu-cation scholarship, it seems that the scripts for legitimacy in academia, especially among top research universities, include the production of research, strategic publication in top tier outlets, and grant/resource-getting scholarship (o’meara, 2002; Rhoades, márquez kiyama, mc-cormick, & quiroz, 2007; Rusch & wilbur, 2007; tuchman, 2009). yet, faculty are also situated in their organizations, from which institution-alized scripts also flow. For example, Eddy and Hart (2012), as well as kahn (2009) and gale (2011), showed that organizational work sites produce institutionalized scripts that guide faculty work expectations (see also zucker, 1977/1991). A university that has developed strong partnerships with local schools and rewards its faculty for action re-search and local dissemination of that research provides a different and nuanced set of scripts for faculty evaluation.

it seems, then, that faculty must work between institutionalized scripts of legitimacy that stem from multiple dimensions of the field, including the profession itself and evaluative bodies as well as their or-ganizational work sites. Bourdieu argued that as individuals work their way through these different scripts, they do so to establish that they belong.


Habitus

According to Bourdieu, how one struggles and makes her way through such scripts is pulled from one’s habitus. habitus is how one sees the world and her place in it, how the world operates, and how one should operate in relation to that world. Rather than being “the fate that some people read into it” (Bourdieu & wacquant, 1992, p. 134), habitus was conceived as an open system that humans carry, where learning and skill acquirement is possible but always filtered by one’s history. Writ-ing about habitus, Bourdieu noted:

the purpose of the [habitus] is to break away with the intellectualist philoso-phy of action represented in particular by the theory of homo-economicus as rational agent. . . . to have a logic without having logic as its principal . . . to put forth a theory of practice . . . by escaping both the objectivism of action understood as a mechanical reaction . . . and the subjectivism which portrays action as the deliberate pursuit of a conscious intention, the free project of a conscience positing its own ends. (Bourdieu & wacquant, 1992, p. 120–121)

Capital

habitus, then, is built out of one’s history and experiences, which manifest in various forms of capital (e.g., fiscal, cultural, social, insti-tutional). everyone’s habitus provides capital, but Bourdieu pointed out that different stocks of capital are assigned different values by powerful institutions. there are numerous demonstrations of this argument in the literature. For example, yosso (2005) illustrated how latina and la-tino students bring rich forms of capital to their k–20 schooling experi-ence which were rarely, if ever, recognized or valued by conventional measures of value or success. Within the academic profession, specifi-cally, Baez (2000), delgado-Bernal and Villalpando (2002), houston (2000), and Rhoades et al. (2007) all provide examples of how schol-ars of color often create careers that run contrary to the norms of aca-demia and which are often anchored in personal biographies and val-ues. All of these scholars also demonstrate that their colleagues may not understand or value the approach they have taken in their careers. this scholarship echoes and sometimes draws explicitly from Bourdieu (1988) in that they suggest that the crafting of one’s career grows out of a particular history, a certain view of the world—or said otherwise, out of habitus—and all also show that falling outside the norm can be problematic for scholars since they do not work in a vacuum but in a field shaped by powerful scripts that dictate legitimacy (see Rhoades et al., 2007; Stanley, 2007).


In sum, Bourdieu’s theory helps to sketch out the field of higher edu-cation as an arena where faculty submit to the rules of the game and seek to play because they want a chance to define, and perhaps to rede-fine, the stakes that are at stake. When faculty member and field con-verge, habitus or personal biography informs perspective and plausible forms of practice or agency. Below i describe my methodology, analy-sis, discussion and implications.

Methodology

this article is drawn from a larger multi-method investigation set at one university, which included participant observation, survey research, and in-depth faculty interviews. As noted earlier, i have written from this data set in different ways to highlight all that i learned from the faculty situated in this striving university. in this article, though, the pri-mary intent is to consider comparatively the ways in which faculty re-sponded to striving in order to offer a framework that can be helpful for future studies of faculty agency inside similar contexts. with the intent of providing a framework of faculty agency, i focused my data analysis on 35 faculty interviews and observation notes for methodological tri-angulation (guion, diehl, & mcdonald, 2004). Below i introduce the research setting, followed by a description of my data collection meth-ods, analysis, and measures for trustworthiness.

Border University

the site selected for this study will be referred to as Border Uni-versity (BU). BU was selected as a site due to its striving mission as announced by the BU president several times in public speeches. BU sits in the southwestern part of the United States and enrolls more than 22,000 students. with its relatively open-access mission, BU serves as a vital access point for underrepresented students in the region, who are overwhelmingly Latino. Additionally, most BU students are first-generation college students. eighty percent of BU students come from the local community, and approximately 60 percent of the teachers in the county attended BU for their teaching degrees. University program-ming, policies, and field notes suggest that the university accounted for the needs and assets of this culturally rich but economically poor com-munity. For example, multiple core-curriculum courses were taught in Spanish to serve the large, Spanish-speaking latino population. innova-tive financial aid plans were also designed to support BU students who often work full-time jobs.


the move to enhance BU’s research renown became explicit and widely public around the 2003–2004. A review of organizational docu-ments revealed that research and grant-getting began to be heavily em-phasized around this time. then a key moment took place in 2008 when the president advised the university community that it should no longer see itself as a regional university but as a “tier 1” aspirant research uni-versity, on its way to “national prominence” (Field notes, 2008). For-mal and informal discussions indicated that administrators began to hold monthly meetings to advise faculty that “expectations were changing” and that they should produce more research, disseminate nationally, and develop grant proposals (Field notes, 2006, 2008, 2010). while Border leaders aimed to remake the university, they also simultaneously sug-gested that the new mission would not undercut BU’s commitment to access, teaching, and local engagement.

Faculty Interviewees and Interviews

Interviewees were drawn from three fields: applied (e.g., education, counseling), liberal arts (e.g., communication, sociology), and sciences (e.g., biology, engineering). i sought interviews from a wide range of disciplines to account for the discipline-based differences with regard to faculty work orientations and preferences (Becher, 1995). however, I organized the distinct disciplines into three broad fields on the basis of similar underpinnings (Biglan, 1973) and in order to protect inter-viewee identities (Mason, 2002). The final interviewee pool was com-posed of 14 applied field faculty, 14 liberal arts faculty, and 7 science faculty.

interviews had three parts. First i asked faculty to describe their en-trée to the professoriate and to the university. then i asked faculty to describe the kinds of expectations that they approached their career with, actual expectations, and whether or not those expectations were changing due to the university’s striving orientation. Finally i asked fac-ulty to articulate the contributions of their work and the kind of role that they played at the university or in higher education. interviews gen-erally took 60–180 minutes. All interviews were recorded, transcribed, and provided to participants for member checking.

Analytical Process

Bogdan and Biklen’s (2006) compare and contrast recommenda-tions guided my analytical approach. i read individual transcripts for accuracy. then i used analytical questions derived from my theoretical framework as i reread each transcript. For instance, i read transcripts and asked myself, “what are the histories of these professors, and how


might they shape how they describe their work? how might these his-tories be evidenced in the kinds of actions they take in their careers, especially related to the university’s striving?” in line with Bourdieu, faculty views or understandings are seen as part of habitus, which in-forms concrete action, but views, alone, are not considered agentic. this conception differs from o’meara and campbell’s (2011) take on agency as they argue that perspective taking can be agentic. For Bourdieu and in this article, perspectives are implicit or inscribed, not deployed inten-tionally and do not translate to action.

Trustworthiness

to ensure trustworthiness, i relied on well-established practices. early in the coding process, i contacted four professors from different disciplines to discuss my emerging analysis. I received confirmation for the analysis. throughout my analysis, i worked with a critical friend who debriefed me and presented rival analytical explanations. i also maintained a detailed audit trail to help account for objective observa-tions and subjective biases. moreover, i used multiple data sources (in-terviews, members-check notes, observation/field notes, audit trail) to look at my argument from different angles and perspectives. Finally, because qualitative researchers are concerned that the interpretation of the data resonates with the community that has been studied, about one year after the study was completed, I presented findings to a large group of the university’s faculty and administrators. discussion during this presentation further confirmed and refined, but did not change, my analysis.

Analysis

i bounded the categories presented below on the basis of similar ac-tions. The categories are constituted by specific forms of agency, and a faculty member might engage in actions that fall mostly under one category while sometimes engaging in actions that fall under another. in other words, while the framework sketches out common actions and ties them to faculty habitus, the framework should not be understood as an attempt to essentialize faculty or faculty agency on the basis of histori-cal and personal characteristics. essentially, i placed faculty among the different categorical groups in ways that reflected their most predomi-nant responses to the striving context.

with this in mind, i present the three categories that i developed to describe faculty agency: 1) operationalizing, 2) negotiating, and 3) re-sisting. Operationalizing, which i have described in extensive detail in


other work (gonzales, 2012) means that faculty reacted in ways that advanced BU’s aspirations, often benchmarking, counting, and com-paring their productivity against “institutionalized scripts” of already established, top-tier research universities. Negotiating means that fac-ulty worked between the institutionalized scripts of the field and their organization, often holding back some of their capital to preserve stu-dent and teaching centeredness. Resisting means that faculty made no changes to their work profile to advance the university’s aspirations and maintained a student, teaching, and regionally centered profile, which seemed to be a form of agency that stemmed from their habitus. it is important to note that, previously, such practices were highly affirmed by the university. in line with Bourdieu’s theory of practice, i begin my presentation of each agentic category by tying faculty histories to respective understandings and views of striving and then to forms of agency.

Operationalizing

those who operationalized Border’s research aspirations advanced their careers as researchers and leaned heavily on institutionalized scripts for legitimacy that dominate the academic profession, such as establishing an (inter)national reputation, publishing in top tier journals, and competing for grant money (o’meara, 2002; Rhoades et al., 2007). Simultaneously, they rejected organizational-level scripts that promised that BU’s regional teaching commitments would not be compromised.

Habituses and World Views. Twelve of the fifteen professors in this group were educated in what are considered elite research universi-ties. each described how they were socialized to be a “researcher.” dr. Jackson1 noted that he had not thought much about the “teaching side of things” before entering academia. Six of the professors were at least second-generation college students. Of these professors, five were women and nine were men. eight of these professors were tenured. Among the fifteen, nine were faculty of color. I learned that five of the eight tenured professors previously held significant administrative roles at the university. this administrative experience afforded them knowl-edge regarding Border’s aspirations, which was inscribed in their habi-tus and informed their view of Border’s striving.

the tenure-track professors in the group explained that they were hired specifically to advance the university’s aspirations. The views that these professors held about Border’s striving were very different from those views held by the tenure-track faculty who negotiated, as will be shown. these distinct views, i suggest, bear down on the faculty’s


actions. the perspectives on Border’s striving for this group of profes-sors are exemplified in Dr. Arguello’s comment below:

i felt it was important for me to be in an institution where research is a focus because in the long run that will benefit me in terms of my profession. There are different institutions placed along the continuum . . . different emphasis on research to a different degree, but you’re safest when you have a substan-tial research record.

Somewhat similarly, dr. Rivera explained what the research aspirations meant to him:

i think tier 1 will bring more resources, more prestige, and more attention to what we are doing here . . . to make it a place of excellence where we can advance scholarly work.

As illustrated, both of these professors described the transition posi-tively. other professors in the group also described striving positively but pointed to many challenges. Specifically, faculty in this group de-scribed the focus on teaching and the open-access mission as problem-atic to the university’s aspirations. For instance, dr. ortiz explained:

open-admissions means that we will take students—and i’m not knocking it—that we take students that may or may not be fully prepared in certain areas and we take them anyway, and then hopefully, we bring them up to speed by offering remedial courses. . . . when you do that, it means you are in a teaching university. . . . that’s just the truth.

most of the faculty in this group took agency by rejecting the idea that BU could achieve a research mission while also maintaining a teaching and access mission. instead, they focused their efforts on research pro-duction, grant writing, and the strategic dissemination of their work as i describe below.

Operationalizing in Action. when dr. Romero, a scientist trained at a renowned university, described his work experience at Border, he noted he had success writing grants but that that success often came from his willingness to work through bureaucratic barriers and lagging infrastructure:

i [have been] very successful in obtaining grants . . . i got two grants, two major grants. One of them was, well, it was the first time that this kind of grant was written and submitted from [our university] and it was funded. So,


[the grant was a] . . . great accomplishment. But, you know, to have funding is something that you cannot stop. you have to continuously . . . be writing, submitting proposals.

dr. Romero explained that the grants supported research activities and students, and allowed him to “buy out” his teaching time. Based on his experience at a research university (habitus), this seemed to be logical approach for a research university professor. Similarly, dr. lucero, a young tenure-track professor, matter-of-factly stated, “i have divested myself of nearly all service and advising duties and have been trying to refocus my efforts into research and to a somewhat lesser extent teaching.”

Recall how dr. ortiz pointed out that teaching and open-access were contradictory to a research mission and that was “just the truth.” to ad-vance a career akin to a research university professor, dr. ortiz took action by controlling his teaching assignments. As he stated, “i don’t have to deal with the non-majors, the people that are at the very be-ginning”—and whom, he noted, require extensive support. Arturo ex-plained that at one point he volunteered to teach a course for undergrad-uates but that he made sure that he would “never do that again.”

these comments are important for many reasons. As a tenured faculty member with a well-established national reputation, dr. ortiz deployed capital (tenure) and found a way to work through and push back on or-ganizational level scripts that seemed contradictory to the career of a research university professor. while dr. ortiz looked to evade the labors of non-major, undergraduate teaching, those who negotiated attempted to keep such work at the core of their career.

Negotiating

the second group of faculty negotiated between the institutional-ized scripts that flowed from the higher education field and from the university. like those who operationalized, these professors noted that BU needed to provide infrastructure to support the transition. however, rather than push through the infrastructure issues, like drs. ortiz and Romero, these professors held back what Bourdieu would refer to as “capital” because they saw striving differently. Specifically, their ne-gotiating was a result of how they understood striving’s impact on the kind of work profile that would come to be valued at BU and the ways that this would affect students. thus, they worked through the scripts of the field and the scripts of the organization, always hoping to preserve teaching and student-centered work.


Habituses and World Views. eight of the fourteen faculty in this group were the first in their family to attend a university. These professors noted that they accessed higher education through broad-access uni-versities similar to BU. this group consisted of seven men and seven women. Six of the fourteen were faculty of color while nine of these professors came from working-class families. Additionally, nine of these professors grew up or spent a long period of time in or around BU or a very similar region, where higher education options for under-served communities are limited. interestingly, all of the professors in this group were early career, tenure-track faculty. the view of these pro-fessors can generally be described as one of concern, exemplified below in dr. Baines’ comments:

there is going to have to be some awful decisions made. A lot of people are going to be left behind. tier 1 does not bring everyone along. we’re going to stop admitting some undergrads if the scores are not high enough. we’re going to fire most of our adjuncts. This has to happen if we are going to be a tier 1 . . . i don’t know how it will play out—

Similarly, dr. estrada said:

why does BU feel like it needs to stand beside those institutions if that’s what it’s trying to do and to kind of make itself into those types of institutions . . . In doing that, you have to sacrifice other things . . . I’m thinking of things that have to do [with] BU serving the needs of the community and . . . being an accessible institution for the community.

dr. estrada grew up near BU and remembered how BU’s open-access mission allowed her father to take an occasional course to help him at work. She worried that BU would not remain accessible to the local community as it had been for her father. this knowledge shaped the understandings that she and others had about BU’s aspirations and in-formed the kind of agency they took.

Negotiating in Action. dr. Baines graduated from a top program in her field and then worked at another striving university before arriving at BU. her experience shaped not only how she understood striving but also how she took action in the shifting context, as noted below:

For me, the tier 1 talk doesn’t really change my strategy. . . . i shoot the moon once a year or twice a year and then think about where can I fit the rest of it. . . . i mean it’s not the same strategy i would have if i were somewhere else. if i were [at another place], i would probably be looking for other [out-


lets] aggressively, do more team writing, so that instead of getting one or two good journal articles a year i would be shooting for three.

A first-generation college student who understood the import of access and teaching, but who was also familiar with striving contexts, dr. Ba-ines held back to preserve time for teaching and because she was quite skeptical of the aspiration at large.

On the other hand, Dr. Treviño was the first in his family to attend college and entered higher education via an open-access university. dr. Treviño noted that he benefited from attentive faculty mentoring, and in his efforts to keep up with the university, he always tried to preserve the student-centered orientation of the university.

i think [Border’s changing mission] affects everybody and certainly new hires. there is the expectation that with young people, that they are going to be bringing in some rigorous research agenda to the university. it can be challenging because i feel like i am a student-oriented person and i enjoy mentoring students, and that’s a big part of why i wanted to join academe . . . but i also realize where the university is going. So, the challenge for me is making sure that i have enough serious and quality research . . . so that i can be successful through the tenure and promotion process.

working to preserve the work that he set out to do, and the work that seemed most important from his perspective, dr. treviño took on the responsibility of undergraduate advisor for his department.

Another example of how habitus shaped the views and actions of individuals comes from dr. estrada. She described how BU’s striving compelled her to “deemphasize teaching in order to focus on research,” but her connection to BU via her father allowed dr. estrada to see and do things that others might miss. dr. estrada described her approach to working with graduate students:

i feel like it’s important to take [the realities of my students’ lives] into con-sideration, even in developing my syllabus and the kinds of assignments and the kinds of expectations i have.

dr. estrada commented that only one of her graduate students was a full-time student. She was well aware that most of her students worked as professionals and had family responsibilities rather than working as teaching/research assistants. dr. estrada’s habitus offered her an un-derstanding and an appreciation for the circumstances of her students’ lives and it only seemed natural to account for them in her teaching and


expectations. At the same time, dr. estrada admitted she was making more efforts to focus on research. these professors negotiated as they neither fully rejected nor adopted the institutionalized scripts for what a striving research university faculty member is expected to do.

Resisting

Some faculty assumed agency by resisting Border’s striving. Unlike those who operationalized, these professors were not motivated by the idea of establishing a national reputation or publishing in only top-tier journals. they were vested in the practice of teaching, maintaining uni-versity-community relations, and publishing in places where local and regional audiences could learn of their work.

Habituses and World Views. Six professors who were interviewed seemed to resist the transition. Four of the six professors were first-generation college students that eventually became academics. of the six, two were women and four were men; three were faculty of color. For their terminal degrees, three attended what are considered elite re-search universities, and the other three attended universities very similar to Border. only one of the six had worked at another university. years spent working at Border University amongst these professors ranged from almost 10 to 20. perspectives of striving among this group are ex-emplified by the following comment: “I am close to retirement and am not interested in [BU’s] goals for tier 1 status because it often under-mines the mission of [my field] as a teaching program.” This comment, from dr. martinez, illustrates the clear divergence, and potential con-flicts, between those who operationalized and those who resisted. Dr. Chavez offered a comment that reflected another perspective common to this group:

A lot of people who came to [BU] came here with the whole president’s speech of “we are dedicated to the students and we value research and expect you to do both.” most of us like both, but we don’t want to become [focused] on only research . . . i don’t want to ever have to focus so much on research and lock my door on students if they need me.

For Drs. Martinez and Chavez, striving represented a significant shift in time, resources, and faculty efforts. Both first-generation students, these professors kept teaching as their highest priority and made no changes to accommodate BU’s striving. they viewed teaching as important con-tributions to academia and worked to keep it at the forefront of their work, as did the others in this group.


Resisting in Action. Dr. Walker and Dr. Medina were both first-gener-ation college goers. they detailed how they spent most of their time on student-related issues and departmental programming. dr. walker men-tioned how he took on writing-intensive classes so that he could focus on the development of students’ writing abilities. dr. medina described his desire to be an academic with the following:

it was . . . about working with hispanic students. . . . [the population] just doesn’t have that much educational experience, and i thought, “well, let me see what i can do here . . . okay, now it’s my time to take what i have and help others.” . . . you know, you receive something, so you have to give it back, and that’s what i want to do.

Rather than conform to the research mission or negotiate in some way, dr. medina noted that he had made no changes in light of BU’s striving. instead, his work consisted of building relationships with students:

when you have a student come up, it’s always good to see them . . . i mean, you try to be a little tough with them in class, but once it’s all over, it’s like “this is over, let’s be friends! let’s get to know one another better!”

clearly, resisting was about pushing back on and mostly ignoring Bor-der’s striving mission in order to advance teaching, serving the commu-nity, and access. these professors were not interested in any other kind of career.

Discussion and Implications

the goal of this article has been to examine and illustrate how fac-ulty responded to their striving university context. i framed my analysis with Bourdieu’s theory of practice because his work provides a histo-ricized, flexible lens for the study of agency in complex and powerful fields, like higher education. My analysis revealed three major forms of agency: operationalizing, negotiating, and resisting. As noted above, it is important to note that the framework and its constituent categories are not intended as absolutes or mutually exclusive forms of agency but as tools to describe overarching forms of agency and the distinctions among these forms.

Returning to Bourdieu, i argue that these forms of agency seemed sensible and fitting to various faculty because they were actions that grew from their view of the world, from lessons and experiences that were inscribed in habitus over time. Such insights are incredibly impor-


tant because they show that faculty approaches are connected to profes-sional and personal histories, as suggested by the work of Baez (2000), Rhoades and colleagues (2007), núñez, murakami-Ramalho, & cuero (2010), and ek, cerecer, Alanis, & Rodriguez (2010). thus, any ap-plication or expansion of this framework should be guided by an ex-ploration into faculty histories and one that is open to pointing to the valuable forms of capital that nuanced histories afford to their carriers.

For example, if i take the actions of those who operationalized but detach their actions from the faculty members’ histories, it might seem that they do not support open-access institutions or the students/com-munity that Border serves, or that they are not invested in teaching. in other words, the explanation for their choices becomes quite narrow and individually centered rather than historically situated. By situating their agency, it is possible to understand how the action that they took is anchored in historicized sets of lessons and experiences that deemed some approaches to faculty work more appropriate or legitimate than others. For instance, recall that all except for one of the tenure-track professors in this group attended elite research universities for their ter-minal degrees where open-access is not the norm and where teaching or student-faculty relations are often described as secondary concerns (terosky, 2005). only one to three years out of their terminal degree, the institutionalized scripts that guided this group most strongly were connected to the broader field of higher education where publishing and grant-getting are taken-for-granted prescriptions for what faculty in top-tier universities do. to this end, striving seemed natural and progressive to these professors, as if being a research university/research university professor was the pinnacle of higher education. For these professors, striving signaled that Border wanted to take on the form of higher edu-cation that they knew best.

For administrators, operationalizing professors represent willing sup-porters. they are the professors who will likely produce the mass schol-arship and grant-getting necessary to push the university “up” the hier-archy. it is important, though, for administrators to keep in mind and for researchers to explore the ways that operationalizing can reshape the culture at a striving university. Such insights can be gleaned from this work as well as Rusch and wilbur’s (2007) study of earning legitimacy within a striving context. one clear example of the kinds of cultural tensions that might emerge in striving contexts concerns how those who operationalized viewed the BU tradition of open-access, teaching and student-centeredness as problems while those who negotiated, and es-pecially those who resisted, considered these invaluable practices to hold on to.


meanwhile, the professors who negotiated worried about teaching and access in light of BU’s striving. throughout their interviews, it was clear that they viewed Border’s accessibility and student-centered practices as something valuable and a legitimate contribution to be pre-served. yet these professors were also aware that they were vulnerable. without tenure, they worked to negotiate a space somewhere between the institutionalized scripts of legitimacy that stem from the “field” and the scripts from the organization that had long favored access and teaching.

the views and agency of those who negotiated must also be histo-ricized. Recall that eight of these professors were first-generation col-lege students. A number of them entered higher education via universi-ties with broad-access missions similar to Border’s. others lived in the BU region or in one similar to it and witnessed the important role that universities play in such communities. yet all of these professors were non-tenured, tenure-track faculty, meaning they had fresh experience and knowledge regarding the norms that characterize faculty work roles at major elite research universities. this could have allowed them to prioritize research and grant activity over teaching and serving students, but in line with Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, these recently acquired forms of capital were mediated by dispositions that these scholars had longer maintained: growing up in working-class families, living in com-munities where they had seen, first-hand, the benefits that a university like BU provides, and so they negotiated instead.

negotiating their way through, these professors modeled the mentor-ing that they received from their own professors, but they also found themselves trying to carve more time out for research, as dr. estrada and dr. treviño described. Some held back valuable skills, like dr. Ba-ines, who did not try to “shoot the moon” because she was skeptical of the university’s commitment to tier 1 and knew that teaching and student support were important ways to focus her time, given the many first-generation college students that filled her classes. Whereas those who operationalized pushed back on BU’s institutionalized scripts re-garding teaching and access, these professors negotiated, pushing back against the tier 1 pursuit hoping to maintain the regional and teaching mission. in fact, their concerns are not unfounded; gardner (2010) and o’meara and Bloomgarden (2011) highlighted how, in fact, striving de-tracts from regional, teaching, and student-centered practices.

one would think that, given their untenured status, these professors would have simply followed the aspirations of the university. yet i sug-gest that the histories of these professors as first-generation college stu-


dents, as individuals who benefited from open-access institutions and good mentoring, shaped their understanding of BU’s striving. they problematized this shift by pointing to the risks that striving poses, but aware of their tenuous position as untenured professors, they took action in ways that would allow them to remain in academia—such as focusing on teaching and making more time for research but brushing aside grant writing or not “sweating” the idea that their dissemination efforts should be focused only on “top tier journals,” as dr. Baines noted. Although seemingly “mundane” (clegg, 2005), these agentic efforts allowed these professors to craft a career that was meaningful to them and, i would suggest, to the field of higher education as well.

This set of findings offers many important insights. First, as early ca-reer faculty, these professors represent a fiscal investment on the uni-versity’s part. Administrators, as well as faculty search committees, must consider carefully the position that they place new hires in dur-ing such dramatic organizational change. Although organizations are always in flux, and while the tenure process is consistently described as ambiguous, the kind of change that Border proposed entailed deep cultural shifts that had already begun to impact faculty evaluation. con-sequently, these professors struggled to find a space where they could realize a career that aligned with their view of the world, the changing context of their work site, and the field of higher education. Administra-tors and planners should work carefully with similarly situated faculty to ensure that they are able to develop clear work plans and that they are supported in light of this shift.

Finally, with regard to those who resisted, these professors rejected the idea of striving altogether. As longtime academics, with ten to twenty years of experience in academia, they were familiar with the in-stitutionalized scripts for legitimacy that guide faculty work in top re-search universities. however, they were not interested in achieving or adapting to those scripts in any way. initially, it may seem quite easy to point to these individuals as obstinate faculty. yet, by considering the habituses of these individuals we can, again, manage a more contextual understanding of their responses. All tenured, five of these professors worked at BU for their entire career. during this time, Border was situ-ated as a regional research university, with a limited research profile and an emphasized teaching mission. these BU norms were structured onto the habitus of these professors and then reinforced through the prac-tices of these professors over time. As noted by gale (2011) and eddy and hart (2012), organizational cultures have a way of shaping faculty careers. Thus, it was difficult for these professors to imagine a way in


which BU might draw together the old and new mission, just as it was difficult for those who operationalized to imagine how accessibility or teaching/student centeredness might present valuable ideals and prac-tices for a top research university to seriously embrace.

not only did this groups’ extended experience at BU shape their worldview and practices, but so did the personal experience that they brought to the university. For instance, drs. chavez, medina, and Martinez detailed their experience as first-generation college students and fondly described the great mentorship they had received while in school. For administrators, this group of professors might seem prob-lematic. however, these professors hold a wealth of capital, as Bourdieu might refer to it. they have the potential to play an important role in this striving university, if their strengths are leveraged and valued by administrators.

in sum, the professors in this study drew together understandings of Border’s striving mission by leaning on institutional scripts drawn from the higher education field, to a much lesser extent on the institutional scripts that BU offered, and often from their own personal histories. previous empirical studies, as well as the data presented here, suggest that there are institutionalized scripts produced in and across the higher education field that privilege research productivity, strategic dissemina-tion of research, grant-getting, and graduate education. in other words, to be a valued and legitimate academic, especially in the sector of re-search universities, it seems a professor must focus on such activities (o’meara, 2002; tuchman, 2009). As Border strove to earn a national top tier research status, some faculty believed that such institutionalized scripts for legitimacy would trump organizational traditions of student access, teaching, and community centeredness. consequently, i called their three forms of agentic responses: operationalizing, negotiating, and resisting.

This work yields important implications for future research. My find-ings suggest that it would be wise for researchers to explore faculty agency by disaggregating data by tenure status and time spent at the university, in addition to the ever-important considerations of race/eth-nicity and gender. The entire notion of being a first-generation college-student-turned-academic is intriguing. how such a history converges with gender, race/ethnicity, and other characteristics are questions that need to be teased out, and Bourdieu’s theory might be blended with in-tersectional perspectives that account for such convergences (núñez, murakami-Ramalho, & cuero, 2010). it seems micro-level studies that account for faculty histories and perspectives in nuanced ways can shed


a powerful light on university-faculty intersections. on this note, this framework begins to sketch out the kinds of tensions that can emerge in a striving context among a university’s faculty. Future work should both refine and extend this framework to explore the relational interactions among faculty of different orientations.

Finally, future research might consider if and how agency imprints the trajectory of striving universities. For instance, is it possible to un-derstand if and how those who operationalize or those who negotiate actually shape the organizational shift itself? Such work would help us move past the notion of structuration (the reproduction of structure as we know/recognize it) to show how reformation actually happens over time. in sum, i offer this framework in hopes of it being used and fur-ther refined so that the field of higher education can begin to establish an understanding of striving from the faculty perspective and from the perspective that faculty can and do act agentically.

Notes

i offer a sincere thanks to the reviewers who provided support and critical feedback to enhance this article. i also express deep gratitude to the interviewees who shared so much with me over the course of this project.

1 i refer to interviewees with their professional title and a pseudonym for their last name.

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Documents

Framing Faculty Agency Inside Striving Universities an Application of Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice