NEW FACULTY INVOLVEMENT FOR WOMEN AND MINORITIES

I used variations of Astin's involvement model to guide a study of fou r cohorts of women and minorities as new faculty: two groups from a co mprehensive university and two of them from a research campus. The two least demanding levels of inquiry for both interviewer and interviewe e-unstructured and structured-provided rich descriptions of disappoint ments, problems, and values that distinguished nontraditional new hire s from a matched sample of white male newcomers. More demanding levels of inquiry and analysis-a New Faculty Faring Index with 20 rating dim ensions and a repeated exercise in career mapping-distinguished succes sful and unsuccessful new faculty in ways that suggest reliable sequen ces of career fault lines and specific interventions to avoid them. Th us, the most useful interviews were the most involving. Involvement no tions also predicted the outcome of new faculty experiences: women and minorities tended to be less effectively immersed in their campuses a nd in self-help actions than were white males, but nontraditional newc omers who managed the highest levels of involvement evidenced the most promise for successful careers.