Faculty involvement and commitment

Universities, as Wanat (2006) observes, are “institutions that completely depend on and are defined by their human capital [particularly the academic staff]” (p. 214); therefore, the contributions of the academic staff to the TM cannot be overemphasised largely because many TM activities rely on the knowledge, involvement and connections of the academic staff. Because of their knowledge and active involvement in teaching and/or research, members of the academic staff are strategically positioned to contribute to the success of any community-oriented or joint teaching and research projects. Therefore, despite the importance of a mission, organisational structures and hire and promotion policies and practices, as the above discussion shows, the TM cannot flourish at any university campus without the active involvement and commitment of the academic staff (Beere et al., 2012;

Furco, 2002; Holland, 1997; Mugabi, 2013). Hence, as Clark (2000) observes, “The most frequent mistake made in attempts to transform universities, is for a management team to proceed on its own without involving faculty and their department from the outset” (pp.

70 To increase the participation of the public and private sectors in the activities of the university by the end of 2010; promote increased joint research, technology innovation and transfer to address stakeholder needs by 2011; and establish a partnership for public and private sector utilisation of the university’s competencies by the end of 2010 (MUK, 2008, p. 18).

176–177). Herein, the assessment of the involvement and commitment of the academic staff to the TM focused on three core issues: (a) the roles and responsibilities of the academic staff, (b) the presence/absence of support mechanisms and (c) the attitudes and knowledge of the academic staff about the TM.

With regard to the roles and responsibilities, the university’s policy on the recruitment and promotion of the academic staff outlines four responsibilities of the academic staff, namely: teaching, research, service and leadership in the university and professional service, including providing service to the community. In fact, all the interviewed academic staff affirmed the above-mentioned roles and responsibilities. As a member of the academic staff, R24, for example, noted:

I am supposed to teach, to do research, to provide consultancy services to the community, which we call community outreach and to [be] involve[d] in other university activities like sitting on committees—research committees and appointment committees. (Personal communication, March 28, 2012.)

Therefore, the participation of the academic staff in some of the TM activities is one of the requirements for their appointment and promotion to senior academic positions at the university. However, the general feeling among the interviewees was that the evaluation process is skewed towards teaching and research achievements and that the rewards for one’s involvement in TM activities are not commensurate with the time and effort expended.

In terms of the support mechanisms, the interview and documentary data show that, besides the above-mentioned organisational structures and policies, the university lacks a structured support system to incentivise and to reward the involvement of the academic staff in TM activities. R15, for example, noted:

Apart from those structured programmes like academic programmes where students have to go out … I am not aware of a well-structured system whereby we encourage our members. … It’s normally [an] individual initiative. (Personal communication, April 10, 2012.)

Nonetheless, the interview data reveal that some informal or unstructured support mechanisms sometimes exist at the departmental level. Although such arrangements are not a formal practice at the university, some of the interviewees intimated that their heads of departments, at times, allow them to go out to carry out some TM activities. R15, for example, revealed:

The only support I receive could be in [the] form of my head of department giving me time because I can tell him that today I have to do this, and I can be away from office. (Personal communication, April 17, 2012.)

Other interviewees also noted that sometimes when the members of the academic staff want to participate in some TM activities, they reach an agreement with their heads of departments, who then assign their teaching tasks to other members of the academic staff.

The above discussion shows that apart from their participation in field attachment, which is expected and supported, the involvement of the academic staff at MUK in TM activities is predominantly personal, less structured, encouraged but not sufficiently supported and expected and valued (it is the responsibility of the academic staff), but poorly rewarded. In this regard, R11 distinctly noted that,

If you are a member of staff and you want to be promoted to any position beyond the position of a lecturer, you must demonstrate that you have done some work relevant to communities or helped communities to improve their lives. Thus, in a way, even though we don’t have support … it makes us hunt for that support so that we can demonstrate on our CVs that we have done something useful [for] the community as an outreach activity. (Personal communication, April 11, 2012.)

Regarding the attitudes of the academic staff about the TM, the general feeling among the interviewed academic staff was that the TM is a crucial function of the university because of not only its benefits to the university, university staff and students and the external communities, but also the notion that the university should create and share knowledge with communities. In fact, none of the interviewees had doubts about the importance of partnerships between the university and the external communities. R12, for instance, noted:

[The TM] is an important function of an academic institution [because once you have conducted research] the results of this research should reach the community.

[The question, then, is] Do the people around you get an impact from your research?

(Personal communication, March 29, 2012.)

The other interviewees concurred that the TM is an important function and that none of their colleagues views it negatively. The interviewees also pointed out that it is necessary for the university to interact with, learn from and utilise knowledge from the external communities. This attitude conforms to the notion that although the university contains knowledge, the external communities also contain knowledge from which the university can learn (MUK, 2008). These responses evidently show that members of the academic staff (the interviewed ones) have positive attitudes about the TM. Such positive attitudes, however, do not necessarily imply that all the academic staff members are actively or somewhat involved in TM activities. Although some of the interviewees stated that they were actively involved in TM activities, others revealed that they were yet to be actively involved.

In terms of knowledge about the TM, the interview data reveal that most of the interviewees were knowledgeable about outreach and engagement or community service.

They also knew others (individuals and units) within and/or outside their colleges that

carry out some TM activities. Therefore, there was normative agreement among the interviewees that the TM is a worthy function of the university and that the academic staff should actively participate in TM activities. However, there were variations regarding what constitutes the TM. The general feeling is that the TM or service to the community has not been defined clearly and, for that reason, members of the academic staff interpret the TM in slightly different ways.

The above discussion affirms that the key issue regarding the commitment of the academic staff at MUK to the TM is not whether members of the academic staff have positive attitudes about, and are involved and/or would like to be involved in, the TM but rather whether they are motivated and supported appropriately to carry out TM activities. Notwithstanding its centrality as an indicator of institutional commitment to the TM and as a necessity for the institutionalisation of the TM, faculty involvement and commitment alone cannot create sustainable TM efforts. The process of creating sustainable engagement, as Brukardt et al. (2006a) observe, “Requires [committed]

leadership, institutional infrastructure, and financial support that smoothes the path for faculty and students [and external communities] and continually attracts more individuals to participate and contribute” (pp. 17–18). For that matter, the involvement of the academic staff in the TM should be planned, supported and rewarded, not left to chance and/or to individual academic staff because even in situations where the members of the academic staff have positive attitudes about the TM, such potential can only be fully realised in the presence of supportive policies, structures and practices. Otherwise, the involvement of the academic staff would be either an act of altruism or an obligation, and, either way, it would be “professionally compromising for the faculty” (Ward, 2005, p. 228). For this reason, it is unsurprising that while all the interviewed academic staff acknowledged the importance of the TM, some of them explicitly noted that it is meaningless to spend time and effort on TM activities when there are better career-rewarding activities. R6, for example, opined,

Most academics, including myself … feel that that is an important aspect of our role in society, but the system in which we find ourselves does not adequately reward it. It does not adequately reward that function, so people feel that it’s a waste of time. If I am going to spend so many years working with a community to help it to take up the technology or adopt something and it is not going to count much towards my promotion, whereas my colleague, who is not doing that, is spending his time publishing, tomorrow, he will be promoted and I will not be promoted on the basis of what I am doing with the community. (Personal communication, March 27, 2012.)