Faculty Development Program and the Outcome of Academic Development

Faculty Development Programs (FDPs) aim to improve the academic careers of faculty members. This study was designed to assess the attitudes of faculty members and the impact of FDP on their academic improvement.

12 faculty members took part in the research from 2016 to 2019. Using a Delphi method, an open secure questionnaire was provided to 12 junior faculty members in the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care (DACC), Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU), Tehran, Iran. Then, the keywords of the latter were analyzed, leading to a 32-item closed-answer questionnaire, filled out by the same participants. Also, the impact of the study was assessed using bibliometric improvement indices.

Both the response rate and participation rate were 100%. Approximately all the participants considered FDP an advantageous and promising academic program. 65 percent of the participants had academic improvement, from “Assistant Professor” to “Associate Professor” rank. Besides, the cumulative number of citations to the participants had a 16.2 times improvement. Both latter results were significantly higher than the mean improvement of the cohort faculty members in the DACC, SBMU.

Faculty members of DACC, SBMU had positive attitudes towards FDP and described it as “a well-designed multilateral academic teamwork, thriving ethical, educational, managerial and research-related capacities”. Also, objective improvement in some academic indices was observed. In many academic environments including developing countries, FDPs are effective scientific investment methods.