Faculty Sensemaking and Mission Creep: Interrogating Institutionalized Ways of Knowing and Doing Legitimacy

Increasingly, regional and/or teaching colleges and universities are striving to assert themselves as national or international research universities. Although such shifts represent significant implications for faculty members, few works address the faculty perspective or experience with this change. In this qualitative, interpretive paper, I discuss how faculty members made sense of their university’s attempt to achieve a more national, more research-focused mission. Using a critical neo-institutional lens, I outline the sources that faculty members relied upon as they defined their university’s transition. From this analysis, I offer practical and theoretical implications.