Professional Development in the Modern Urban University

Abstract

Faculty members in urban universities face both special challenges and unique opportunities. Greater respect for urban universities produces greater expectations, and, inevitably, greater stress from both within and without, and this makes the cultivation of faculty resources more important than ever. By widening and deepening professional preparation, developing models that make faculty careers more flexible, recognizing and rewarding differential faculty contributions, promoting more leadership in place, and developing more sophisticated knowledge about human learning, professional development programs are poised to play a more important and powerful role than ever before.