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There is a need to support midcareer faculty who have demonstrated scholarly success but require additional development. The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of an initiative for “star faculty” at midcareer, with an emphasis on the role of exceptional others in their professional growth.

This is an exploratory, single-site case study of a midcareer faculty excellence initiative. Data sources include document/site analysis and individual interviews.

Findings reveal the value of “exceptional others” in professional growth among high-performing midcareer faculty. Perceptions about excellence at midcareer emerged as an antecedent to developing midcareer faculty members. Analysis generated themes in behaviors related to supporting midcareer scholars’ professional growth.

This study is an initial step toward refining concepts such as exceptional others, academic stars and scholarly advancement within the academy. There is a need for equity-minded research about these topics. In addition to replication across institutional and disciplinary contexts, there is also a need for longitudinal mixed-methods studies of midcareer faculty mentoring outcomes over time.

The study points to the role of the institution and its senior faculty in fostering midcareer scholarly excellence. Mentoring and development around individualized goals may be of value in addition to an emphasis on clarity around institutional expectations and norms in faculty performance reviews.

Midcareer faculty are a crucial component of the academy, yet they are often overlooked as needing career support, resources and development. This study focuses on mentoring and coaching for postsecondary faculty at midcareer and the role of exceptional others in facilitating faculty professional growth.

There has been a substantial increase in the number of successful African Americans. However, many students, especially African American males, continue to encounter numerous academic obstacles. This chapter focuses on the factors (e.g., social, academic, personal, and familial) that African American males often have to navigate throughout their PreK-12 schooling. Hindrances, such as poverty, lack of academic readiness, poor school experiences, teacher quality, and peer influences, often negatively impact the academic progress of these students and their access to higher level or gifted instruction. In this chapter, the authors discuss strategies that best counter these factors and support and supplement gifted black boys’ educational experiences. Additionally, educational practice and policy recommendations are provided.

As participation in higher education widens with concomitant increases in the number and diversity of commencing students, so does the need for programs that will support their transition and retention. In response to this need, a growing awareness of the value of mentorship in Australian universities has resulted in the introduction of peer mentoring programs for students in many institutions. Mentorship, however, can take many different forms. This chapter reports on a model of academic (faculty) mentorship for commencing science students belonging to a range of defined disadvantaged groups. The program was initially funded by an internal grant, with voluntary participation by eligible students. At the end of the first semester, participants overwhelmingly endorsed the program as having enhanced their transition experience and improved their prospects for academic progress and retention. Despite reduced funding, the program was retained over two subsequent years with slight modifications based on student feedback, together with consideration of its most effective elements. The success of this academic mentorship program demonstrates the potential value of such approaches in the university retention and success of disadvantaged students.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy. It provides an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts. The selected bibliography is useful to efficiently keep up with trends in library instruction for busy practitioners, library science students and those wishing to learn about information literacy in other contexts.

This article annotates 424 English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, theses and reports on library instruction and information literacy published in 2021. The sources were selected from the EBSCO platform for Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and WorldCat, published in 2021 that included the terms “information literacy,” “library instruction,” or “information fluency” in the title, abstract or keywords. The sources were organized in Zotero. Annotations summarize the source, focusing on the findings or implications. Each source was categorized into one of seven pre-determined categories: K-12 Education, Children and Adolescents; Academic and Professional Programs; Everyday Life, Community, and the Workplace; Libraries and Health Information Literacy; Multiple Library Types; and Other Information Literacy Research and Theory.

The paper provides a brief description of 424 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy within 2021.

This paper aims is to present and discuss the personal and educational underpinnings of undergraduate and graduate students’ persistence decision, identify initiatives and strategies academic libraries are adopting which correlates positively with student retention, identify and discuss the main causes leading to attrition and present James White Library’s experience contributing to student retention efforts at Andrews University.

A bibliographic search using databases in the areas of education and library and information science was conducted to review the literature on the relationship between library use and services and university students’ retention.

The main overall factors which contribute to student retention are: user-centered philosophy; involvement and engagement; student identification and sense of belonging; academic success and achievement; and point grade average (GPA) in the context of libraries, the main factors which contribute (or correlate) to student retention are: library instruction; spaces which provide social interaction and learning; and general materials’ use.

This study does not provide results of actual in-person investigations conducted at libraries, rather, identifies presents, and discusses reported studies in the Education and Library & Information Science (LIS) literature.

A summary and structured presentation of the main issues concerning the library’s role in university student’s retention identifies the main personal, including non-academic and academic problems leading to student’s attrition, as well successful efforts and strategies which libraries are adopting to curtail this pressing problem within academic institutions. The paper can be used as general guidelines which academic library managers and library service providers can adopt to contribute to the university’s overall efforts to increase its graduation rate.

Higher education presupposes large expenditures from providers (Universities) and students. Millions of dollars are spent by both parties each year without yielding the expected results, considering that attrition levels can reach more than 40 per cent at any given university during an academic year in the USA. Also, purposeful or intentional expensive recruitment efforts and programs can be greatly curtailed by high attrition rates. However, these can be greatly diminished by successful retention strategies. Also, society is greatly benefited with the talents, skills, and services rendered by a professional with a higher education degree.

This study organizes and systematizes the many study results, ideas, and considerations concerning academic libraries and student retention which are dispersed in the literature of the field, allowing the reader and practitioner to better understand the theoretical and practical issues concerning this subject. It provides the reader with practical experiences and data which will enhance one’s decision-making process in developing retention policies and strategies at the library level.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between positive incentives (perceived organisational support) and negative incentives (publish or perish), on both academic publication productivity and marketing academics’ quality of life. While publish-or-perish pressure is a common technique to improve academics’ performance, its punishment orientation may be poorly suited to the uncertain, creative work that research entails and be harmful to academics’ life satisfaction and other well-being variables. In particular, it may interfere with family commitments, and harm the careers of academic women. While perceived organisational support may be effective in encouraging research outputs and be positive for well-being, it may be insufficient as a motivator in the increasingly competitive and pressured world of academia. These issues are important for individual academics, for schools wishing to attract good staff, and the wider marketing discipline wanting to ensure high productivity and quality of life amongst its members.

A conceptual model was developed and empirically tested using self-report survey data from 1,005 academics across five continents. AMOS structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The findings indicate that the most important determinants of publishing success and improved well-being of academics is organisational support rather than a “publish-or-perish” culture.

The use of a self-report survey may have an impact (and potential bias) on the perceived importance and career effect of a “publish-or-perish” culture. However, current levels of the publish-or-perish culture appear to have become harmful, even for top academic publishers. Additional longitudinal data collection is proposed.

The challenge to develop tertiary systems that support and facilitate world-leading research environments may reside more in organisational support, both perceived and real, rather than a continuation (or adoption) of a publish-or-perish environment. There are personal costs, in the form of health concerns and work–family conflict, associated with academic success, more so for women than men.

This study is the first to empirically demonstrate the influence and importance of “publish-or-perish” and“perceived organisational support” management approaches on marketing academic publishing performance and academic well-being.

Academic integrity is the application of honest, ethical and responsible behaviours to all facets of students’ scholarly endeavours and is the moral code of academia. The international literature reports the prevalence of academic dishonesty in higher education across many disciplines (including the health sciences), and there is evidence linking academic dishonesty in health professional students with future unprofessional behaviour in the workplace. International students are reported to be a particularly vulnerable group. This paper aims to investigate the factors that may be predictive of academic honesty and performance in domestic and international occupational therapy students.

In total, 701 participants (603 domestic students; 98 international students) were recruited from five Australian universities, and data were collected via a two-part self-report questionnaire. ANOVA and multi-linear regression analyses with bootstrapping were completed.

Tendency towards cheating and self-perception tendency towards dishonesty in research, gender, age and hours spent in indirect study were found to be statistically significant predictors of academic integrity and performance.

Limitations of this study were the use of convenience sampling and self-report scales which can be prone to social desirability bias. Further studies are recommended to explore other potential predictors of academic honesty and performance in occupational therapy students.

A range of predictors of academic honesty and success were found that will assist educators to target vulnerable domestic and international occupational therapy students as well as address deficiencies in academic integrity through proactive strategies.

Sociological studies of entrepreneurship focus on social and technical innovations in business. Using an illustration from molecular plant biology and the historical evolution of the term “entrepreneur,” I make a case for the theoretical and methodological importance of studying entrepreneurs and their ventures outside the scope of traditional business. Then, considering the scientific lab as a self-consciously entrepreneurial venture, I use the population of molecular biology labs studying the plant Arabidopsis thaliana to demonstrate a relationship less directly measurable among start-ups in business: diverse sources of funding accompany original activities and ideas within a venture. This is not, however, what predicts lab success. Lab size drives success, but hinders originality. Moreover, I show that established institutions in science are usually the ones that become innovations in business.

In this study, the authors explore the boundaryless careers of faculty and adopt the intelligent career framework to examine success factors for academic careers.

The authors conducted a field study of 36 researchers in the management information systems field from 22 institutions in the US, Australia and Canada. The authors selected the participants representing four strata of researchers: luminaries (high expertise status and high citizenship behavior), experts (high expertise status but low leadership roles), statesmen (low expertise status but high leadership) and journeymen (low expertise status and low leadership). Data regarding the participants' experience of social relationships and social resources as well as entrepreneurial motivations were collected and analyzed.

Results show that faculty who “know-why”, “know-how”, and “know with whom” possess socially valued resources and are successful in advancing their careers. They establish high social status and exercise power within their networks to mobilize resources that promote their careers. On the other hand, faculty who fall short of these competencies impose social closure on themselves and do not strive to exploit resources available through their contacts. The study advances a number of theoretical propositions to guide future research on boundaryless intelligent careers.

Social relationships and social resources do not substitute individual competence, leadership and entrepreneurial motivations; individuals need to develop competence valued by their professional communities and exploit available opportunities and assume leadership roles in order to effectively establish instrumental relationships and mobilize social resources to achieve career advancement.

In this study, we attempt to extend career development research through an examination of the bidirectional relationship between know-why, know-how and know-who in academia.

This paper aims to investigate the academic library’s role in supporting transfer student success, specifically by providing information literacy (IL) instruction. This paper examines whether IL instruction contributes to a transfer student’s sense of academic integration.

The author designed and distributed a survey to incoming undergraduate transfer students at Valparaiso University, gathering information about students’ IL instruction experiences, their attitudes and their preferences for receiving information about the library at their new university. Inferential statistics were used to test correlations between IL instruction and students’ attitudes.

In all, 38 students completed the survey. The t-test results show significantly higher levels of confidence among those students who had participated in formal IL instruction. IL instruction is shown neither to contribute to transfer students’ sense of academic integration nor to benefit students during the transfer process. Respondents believed that transfer students do need information about their new library. They preferred small group settings or private communications for receiving this information, and the critical window is the period from when they arrive on campus through the second week of class.

This study provides guidance into librarians’ outreach efforts to transfer students, including the desirability, format and timing of this information.

This paper is the first to situate IL instruction as a factor in transfer success.