Faculty member's Competencies for achieving the academic mission: A reflection from the perceptions and expectations of doctoral students

The evolution of future universities highly depends on the current initiatives, policies and professional faculty development programs. This study is an attempt to examine the expected faculty members’ competencies for the next decade from doctoral students’ viewpoint. The studied sample consisted of full-time doctoral students of Shiraz University in the academic year of 92-93 214 students were randomly selected according to their gender and fields of study for the survey. The research instrument was a questionnaire constructed by the researcher. The results showed that according to doctoral students, the most expected competency on the part of faculty members in the following decade, would be research competency, however, currently their teaching competency is more favorable than others. Furthermore, this study revealed a huge gap between the current and the desired situations as far as teaching, research, counseling services and collaborative with colleagues competencies are concerned. A significant correlation was found between the different dimensions of faculty members’ competencies. This study can inspire the policy-makers of professional faculty development at Iranian universities by the suggestions offered finally.