Master of Science / Department of Agricultural Economics / Vincent R. Amanor-Boadu / Interest in commercialization of university research has accelerated since the Bayh-Dole Act (1980) granted authority to universities and federally-funded nonprofit institutions, among others, to obtain patents, grant licenses, and transfer custody of patents with the explicit purpose of promoting the utilization and marketing of their inventions. This interest is supported by these institutions' need to expand their funding sources as growth in their traditional funding has lagged their needs. This study seeks to assess the level of understanding of research commercialization and entrepreneurship aspects by the faculty researchers nearly 10 years after Bayh-Dole Act using a survey of university faculty. The results show that there is indeed the desire to move research from universities to the marketplace through technology commercialization and entrepreneurship, but there is need for educational programs to enhance the current perceptions about the commercialization and entrepreneurship among faculty. We show that this need is independent of the demographic characteristics of faculty but influenced the university's policies covering intellectual property and commercialization.

High faculty morale and job satisfaction are vital for optimum performance and important to the quality and vitality of the academic enterprise. However, research on faculty morale and job satisfaction has historically been limited to faculty at traditional comprehensive institutions and specific professional programs. Faculty who conduct biomedical research at academic health centers experience substantial differences in employment expectations and how they are funded than other faculty. The purpose of this study was to explore how personal and professional factors contribute toward positive morale and job satisfaction for faculty in biomedical research programs at one academic health center. This qualitative study used individual semi-structured interviews to explore work-life aspects associated with self-reported levels of morale and job satisfaction. Results from this study indicated that biomedical research faculty enjoy their work and highly value collaborating with their colleagues. The persistent need to fund at least half of their salaries through soft money, the loss of valued colleagues due to turnover, and a lack of identity with their institution decreases job satisfaction. It was also found that job satisfaction is expressed differently by gender and length of employment at one's current institution. Female faculty expressed feelings of limited support for those raising families while faculty employed longer expressed lower satisfaction than those recently hired. Better understanding of what influences job satisfaction and morale for this population will help academic health centers further support their research faculty as well as increase positive faculty identification with the institution.

The theoretical part of the thesis deals with the cooperation between faculty teachers and the Faculty of Education. It defines the role of a faculty teacher and a faculty school in relation to mentoring and the concept of the Clinical School. Furthermore, it surveys forms of cooperation and practice at PedF UK as well as the role of the Faculty and university teachers. The next part of the text focuses on places of interconnetion of theory and practice and presents the form of cooperation in educationally advanced countries. The research part of the thesis focuses on mapping the ways of cooperation between faculty teachers and the Department of Pre-primary and Primary Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, Charles University, and it analyzes the benefits and difficulties of the cooperation, as well as maps the forms of motivation that help this collaboration to be established. The crucial research question is: What forms of motivation do teachers mention when cooperating with the Faculty, what obstacles do they observe and what benefits and assets do they appreciate in this cooperation? As research tools, a group interview and an individual intervieware applied. The thesis also includes suggested ways to innovate the cooperation between faculty teachers and the Faculty of Education.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Background. Traditionally, departmental appointment type (basic science or clinical) and/or degree earned (PhD, MD, or MD-PhD) have served as proxies for how we conceptualize clinical and basic science faculty. However, the landscape in which faculty work has considerably changed and now challenges the meaning of these cohorts. Within this context I introduce a behavior-based role variable that is defined by how faculty spend their time in four academic activities: teaching, research, patient care, and administrative duties. Methods. Two approaches to role were compared to department type and degree earned in terms of their effects on how faculty report their perceptions and experiences of faculty vitality and its related constructs. One approach included the percent of time faculty spent engaged in each of the four academic activities. The second approach included role groups described by a time allocation rubric. This study included faculty from four U.S. medical schools (N = 1,497) and data from the 2011 Indiana University School of Medicine Faculty Vitality Survey. Observed variable path analysis evaluated models that included traditional demographic variables, the role variable, and faculty vitality constructs (e.g., productivity, professional engagement, and career satisfaction). Results. Role group effects on faculty vitality constructs were much stronger than those of percent time variables, suggesting that patterns of how faculty distribute their time are more important than exactly how much time they allocate to single activities. Role group effects were generally similar to, and sometimes stronger than, those of department type and degree earned. Further, the number of activities that faculty participate in is as important a predictor of how faculty experience vitality constructs as their role groups. Conclusions. How faculty spend their time is a valuable and significant addition to vitality models and offers several advantages over traditional cohort variables. Insights into faculty behavior can also show how institutional missions are (or are not) being served. These data can inform hiring practices, development of academic tracks, and faculty development interventions. As institutions continue to unbundle faculty roles and faculty become increasingly differentiated, the role variable can offer a simple way to study faculty, especially across multiple institutions.