Class Year

2024

Document Type

Student Research Paper

Date of Creation

Fall 2023

Department 1

Management

Abstract

What college students study now shapes the future of how society functions. How does curriculum get shaped? Who makes the decisions and final decisions on the general education courses that students must take to meet requirements? Ultimately how much say do professors and specific departments get in determining the future of the students interested in those fields? This paper examines professor autonomy and curriculum development and the management of decisions at a department and college-wide level. Methods used in this study are interviews, field notes and observations, interview notes, and transcriptions. Interviews were conducted with professors in the English and management departments at Gettysburg College. Overall, I found that professors are happy with the level of freedom and autonomy they have within the classroom and at the department level, but their relationships with the administration could improve and they would like to be listened to more, especially with larger decision-making processes. This study suggests that this profession has a higher degree of autonomy and freedom than other careers and can be vastly different to how other colleges are managed. Yet, there is still room for growth to how much of a say professors get on larger decisions being made at their respective institutions.

Comments

Written for MGT-405: Advanced Topics in BOM.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License.

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