Finding middle ground: the liminal identity construction of full-time non-tenure track faculty

The purpose of this study is to understand how full-time non-tenure track (FTNTT) faculty at a teaching-intensive university construct identity and how that identity construction impacts the way these faculty members connect as part of the campus community through interactions with colleagues and participation in research and university service. Non-tenure track faculty now comprise 70 percent of the nation's faculty with about 20 percent employed full time. FTNTT faculty occupy a unique place in academia that is often misunderstood. They often have multiyear contracts and privileges that allow them to integrate into the campus community more than their part time peers. Yet, they also lack the privileges and respect that a tenure position offers, putting FTNTT faculty in a perpetually liminal career position. While there is considerable research on the working conditions for NTT faculty, there is little that focuses on identity construction and only one study that looks specifically at identity construction for FTNTT faculty. Identity construction is linked to the ways in which employees accept an organization's goals as their own and how they perform role and extra role behaviors. This study proposes a perpetual liminality framework to illustrate how employees construct identity and how they use agency as act of resistance or acts of resistance when interacting with colleagues and when participating in research or university service. The results indicate that FTNTT faculty construct identity for a variety of contexts that allow them to find value in their work. The identities that are constructed dictate willingness to participate in role and extra role behaviors. The implications for this study will help universities develop policies and procedures that will convey organizational support to committed faculty, which in turn will lead to student success.