In the context of this developing understanding of the university’s mission and in order to focus on the teaching and research activities of the university,  it was decided to conduct a survey of the faculty.  The survey was sent out to all regular (tenured and tenure-track) and full-time adjunct faculty members on the Main Campus.  The findings from the survey were supplemented with additional information from the Office of Institutional Research and with interviews of department chairs and program heads identified as most directly related to the university's justice mission.  These departments and programs include: Theology, English, Philosophy, Government, Languages and Linguistics, School of Business, School of Foreign Service, and History.  Also considered were materials from the Dean of Students, the University Chaplain, and the Directors of the Volunteer and Public Service Center, the Justice and Peace Studies program, Catholic Studies program, the Center for Urban Research and Teaching, and the Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding, because of the important justice education and student development work undertaken through these programs.

The faculty survey yielded responses from 77 faculty whose teaching covered justice issues, and 61 faculty whose research focused on justice issues, with some substantial overlap between teaching and research focused on justice (n=109 total responses).  Based on the survey nonresponse rate and follow-up interviews with department chairs and deans, we estimated that of all the main campus faculty (N=601), minimally 20 percent have teaching interests, and 11 percent have research interests in justice issues.  At a maximum, there may be as many as 25 percent of faculty with teaching interests and 15 percent of faculty with research interests tied to justice issues.

For faculty who teach on justice issues, 45 percent are in the humanities, 37 percent are in the social sciences, 10 percent are in business, and 9 percent are in the natural sciences.  This survey (comprising information from about 125 courses) along with the 52 sample syllabi submitted reveal that intensive courses entirely focused on justice issues comprised 19 percent of the courses for which  descriptions were submitted, and another 19 percent spent a majority of the class examining justice topics.  Regarding the regularity of the course offerings, the large majority of them are offered at least every year, and often every semester.  Only 7 percent are taught as "buy-out" courses from the faculty member's regular department, whereas the other 93 percent are part of the faculty member's regular course offerings. 

Concerning the faculty's justice research issues, fewer faculty are engaged in research on justice than teach about justice.  The distribution of disciplines in which they are located is quite similar to that found for teaching about justice.  The humanities faculty are most prominent, followed by social science, natural science and business.  The range of topics covered by faculty whose work is justice related is quite broad.  In the humanities, these topics range from biblical interpretations of justice to modern-day applications; specific issues-focus, such as poverty, prejudice and tolerance, slavery, human rights, and language minorities; Catholic social thought; and ethics across a wide range of applications.  In the social sciences, faculty research covers policy applications; structural inequalities of race, gender, and class; diversity issues related to religion, nationality, language, sexual identity, gender, and ethnicity; and specific episodes or manifestations of injustice, such as slavery, the holocaust, and colonialism. In the natural sciences, the topics seem to fit into few categories, such as environmental justice issues--that is, differential access to resources; varying burdens imposed by exposure to pollutants or toxins; and access to technology and the effects of technology transfers.  In business, the research topics include business ethics and socially responsible business practices; labor and management issues; and economic justice issues such as access to credit for minorities and the "glass ceiling."

Interviews with department chairs and deans revealed surprising unanimity with respect to the criteria they articulated as determining the types of justice courses being offered in their departments or schools.  Each  interviewee expressed that it is the discipline that determines how positions are defined within their department/school.  In each case, the respondent articulated that it is a sense of what their discipline defines as important and within its boundaries that helps the department to define its positions.   None of the department chairs or deans expressed that the university's mission had a role in defining positions within the department or influencing the search process.(3)  Such decisions rest within the department, and faculty members collectively determine how positions are defined and evaluated according to standards set by the discipline.  So, even for the justice-related positions identified in the course of this self-study, the department would have recruited and hired the faculty member according to criteria of excellence within that specialty area as defined by the discipline, and would review and promote the faculty by national disciplinary standards of excellence. 

Notes:

3. The chairs understood "mission" in a generic sense, since the University’s mission statement had not been adopted at that time.