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The Meta-Profession Project
Exploring and Recognizing the Full Complexity the Skills required by Faculty Work in Higher Education.

Purpose of the Project

The purpose of the Meta-Profession Project is to promote a better understanding of the full complexity and variety of higher education faculty work. Such an understanding can contribute to the development of comprehensive faculty evaluation systems, the design of professional growth and development programs, and the establishment of academic policies and procedures that more fully support faculty in the full range of their diverse professional duties and responsibilities. Additionally, the Meta-Profession project aims to provide an over-arching model for both promoting research on faculty work and providing a convenient rubric for categorizing extant research in the field. This work has been recognized by the American Educational Research Association which awarded its authors the Interpretive Scholarship Award in 2005.

There are five main sections to this web site:

1
 A summary description of the meta-profession concept.
 
2
 A chronology the development and use of the meta-profession model in terms of papers and presentations that may be downloaded. This section also includes additional papers on related topics of interest by the project authors.
   
3
 An entry to the various matrices that define the model. These matrices are interactive and may be explored in a variety of ways.
 
4
 An invitation to contribute to the model.
5
 Contacting the authors.

The Meta-Profession Concept [Return to Top]

The Meta-Profession project derives from a conceptualization of the professoriate as practicing a 'meta' profession. That is, a college professor must perform at a professional level a variety of roles that require expertise and skills in areas that often extend beyond the faculty member's specific area of scholarly expertise or "Base Profession". Thus, the skill sets required by faculty to perform in these roles are divided into two general categories: Base Profession Skills and the additional Meta-Profession Skills. These skill sets are delineated in a series of matrices which show the interaction between a specific role (e.g., teaching, scholarly/creative activities, service, or administration) and the skills required by the work involved in carrying out that role. These matrices may be accessed via the links in the Exploring the Meta-Profession Model section below.

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Exploring the Meta-Profession Model [Return to Top]

Visitors to this site are invited to explore the various matrices that define and delineate the Meta-Professional model of faculty work. The matrices shown below represent a work in progress thus every cell may not yet be active.

To explore the model click on any term or interaction cell of interest in a matrix. Please note that the interaction cells are of different colors. These colors represent an estimate of the frequency with which a specific skill set is used in the performance of the faculty work represented by the cell. See the LEGEND at the left side of the matrix for the meaning of each color.

The Development and Application of the Meta-Professional Model [Return to Top]

A PDF copy of any of the papers or materials listed below may be downloaded by simply clicking on its title.
2011 The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Special Case of the Meta-Profession Model. An analysis of the metaprofessional skill sets required for SOTL research and assessment. Presented by Michael Theall, Ph.D., at a conference of the Colorado Community College System campuses, June 8, 2011, Denver, CO
2010

Exploring Faculty Roles, Work, & Skills: A Strategy for enhancing professional and organizational development. A professional enrichment seminar presented at the January, 2010, meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, conducted by Mike Theall and Raoul A. Arreola.
2009 Qualitatively Excavating below the Quantitative Surface: An action-oriented, Case-based application of the Meta-professional Model. Paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the AERA. Paper by Michael Theall, Bonnie Mullinix, and Raoul A. Arreola.
2004

The first practical application of the metaprofessional model occurred in August of 2004. Based on the work cited below, Dr. Arreola was invited to develop and conduct a seminar for the faculty of the Florida State University School of Nursing. The objective of the seminar was to develop a plan for promoting the development, support, and recognition of key skills and competencies required for Nurse Education excellence at Florida State University. Based on both the National League of Nursing’s published statement of the 8 Core Competencies of Nurse Educators and application of the meta-professional model presented here, the faculty developed a set of competency statements and standards designed to meet their specific objectives. The Final Report resulting from this work may be downloaded here.
2004 A further development and application of portions of the meta-profession model was presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of AERA in a paper by Raoul A. Arreola entitled "Scholarship Re-Conceptualized: An Evaluative Perspective."
2003 A more completely developed version of the model was presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of AERA in a paper by Raoul A. Arreola, Michael Theall, and Lawrence M. Aleamoni entitled "Beyond Scholarship: Recognizing the Multiple Roles of the Professoriate."
2002 In 2002 Dr. Theall received the McKeachie Career Achievement Award from the AERA Special Interest Group on Faculty Evaluation and Development. Dr. Theall's keynote address, entitled "Leadership in faculty evaluation and development: some thoughts on why and how the meta-profession can control its own destiny" focused on the leadership implications of the meta-profession model.
2001

In 2001 Michael Theall presented a paper (co-authored with Raoul A. Arreola) at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) which described the use of the metaprofession model in defining the professoriat entitled Beyond the Scholarship of teaching: searhing for a unifying metaphor for the college teaching profession.

2001 An expanded version of the Meta-Profession model was presented in 2001 at the 9th Annual Faculty Roles and Rewards Conference of the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) in a paper by Raoul A. Arreola, Lawrence M. Aleamoni, and Michael Theall entitled "College Teaching as a Meta-Profession: Reconceptualizing the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning."
2000 In the Fall of 2000 Dr. Arreola elaborated on his concept in an interview entitled "Higher Education's Meta-Profession" in The Department Chair (Vol. 11, No. 2).
1995 The meta-profession concept has been a featured part of the CEDA workshop on Developing a Comprehensive Faculty Evaluation System for many years. However, the first elements of the basic meta-profession model were published in the 1995 edition the book Developing a Comprehensive Faculty Evaluation System (Raoul A. Arreola, Jossey-Bass) in defining the role of teaching for evaluative purposes. In 2006 the third edition of the book was published and may be ordered from the publisher's web site.
 

ADDITIONAL RELATED PAPERS OF INTEREST [Return to Top]
2005a Valid Faculty Evaluation Data: Are there any? Symposium presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the AERA. To download the entire series of papers presented at this symposium including those by (Raoul A. Arreola and Michael Theall) click HERE.
2005b Crossing over to the Dark Side: Translating Research in Faculty Evaluation into Academic Policy and Practice Keynote address by Raoul A. Arreola when presented with McKeachie Career Achievement Award by the Special Interest Group on Faculty Evaluation and Development of the American Educational Research Association at its 2005 meeting in Montreal. This address further explores the application of the metaprofessional model as an academic adminstrative tool in promoting and evaluating professional growth and performance.
2005c

The Monster at the Foot of the Bed: Surviving the Challenge of Market Place Forces on Higher Education (2005, in To Improve the Academy, Vol 24, pp 15-28) - explores the effect on higher education of the paradigm shift caused by the impact of technology on society. Portions of this article provide specific applications of the meta-profession model in addressing the changes the Academy may wish to make in response to the paradigm shift.

Paper Authors

University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Youngstown State University
The University of Arizona
Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group

An Invitation to Contribute to the Model [Return to Top]

We invite members of the professoriate to contribute to the full development of the Meta-Professional model. As can be seen by exploring each of the matrices above, considerable information remains to be gathered and developed within the various cells of each matrix. The clarification of definitions, the identification of available evaluative and training resources, as well as the citation of relevant research studies remains a major undertaking. In addition, policy implications of the issues defined by the interaction of (ROLE) X (SKILL SET) interactions remains to be discussed. If you would like to contribute to the development of the Meta-Profession matrices we invite you to do so by clicking HERE.

Contacting the Project Authors [Return to Top]

The authors of the meta-profession model may be contacted by e-mail by simply clicking on thier names.

Professor Emeritus
Youngstown State University
The University of Tennessee Health Science Center