Professional and community linkages encompass a wide range of behaviors such as consulting and professional activities and membership and involvement in local community groups. Our survey generally confirmed differences between academic and vocational faculty in the extent of connectivity on professional activities, with few differences in community activities. According to our survey, more than half of full-time vocational faculty had provided consulting services to local employers (Table 7, item k), about 30% of all faculty. However, faculty rarely gave presentations or training workshops to local business, government, or community organizations (Table 5, item d). The mean response for the latter was 1.5 (where 1= 0 times during the academic year 1994-1995 and 2 = 1-5 times), with only small differences among types of faculty.
Our survey also asked faculty whether they were a member of various groups and, if they were, the extent to which they were "personally involved" in them. Table 8 reports the mean responses for all faculty and by faculty type. The first column for each group indicates the proportion who indicated they were members of the group, and the second column shows the overall proportion reporting they were actively involved. Personal involvement was rated on a five-point scale from "none" (= 1) to "a lot" (= 5). All those who answered 4 or 5 are said to have been actively involved.
Although around three-quarters of instructors were members of professional associations (including a majority of part-time faculty), only around one-fifth were members of business or civic groups, and fewer than 10% of all faculty were actively involved. As one might expect, full-time vocational faculty were significantly more likely to be active in local business/industry groups than were academic full-timers. And there were relatively few differences between types of faculty in activities not inherently linked to disciplines: all were about equally likely to be involved with charitable or civic organizations, for example. Vocational faculty are significantly less likely to be active in politics than academic faculty, but more involved with their local churches and schools.
Types of Linkages
In our site visits, we discovered many examples of professional and community activities: (1) participation in professional associations; (2) serving as board members for organizations in their fields such as hospitals, medical laboratories, child care facilities, or public safety consortia; (3) participating in accreditation reviews or other evaluations of such organizations; (4) beta testing software; (5) writing books and manuals or preparing training videotapes or cassettes; (6) providing consulting services or "moonlighting" for local employers; and (7) maintaining informal networks in one's field. Many faculty with whom we spoke mentioned their involvement in professional activities as a key means of establishing connections with the community.