My current research is on finding out if the faculty perception of a STEM department’s family-friendly practices and attitudes is associated with job satisfaction. It is suspected that many factors could influence job satisfaction such as the work-family balance, the average age of the colleagues in relation to the individual faculty, the average number of faculty with children, the average number of faculty with other dependents (such as older adults), and the average spouse employment of the department’s faculty. The main focus will be on the relationship between job satisfaction and perception of department’s family-friendliness, controlling for the other predictors mentioned above. This research is important because it would allow us to determine whether departmental contexts matter in the faculty’s job satisfaction, and which variables, if any, have the most impact on job satisfaction. Additionally, we can find out who will be most affected by these policies. Do the family-friendly policies have a positive association with job satisfaction in faculty with dependents and without unemployed spouses? Do gender and/or age modify individual level associations? The outcome of this research hopefully would enable the STEM departments to re-evaluate and modify their family-friendly practices and attitudes in order to be able to recruit and keep the best faculty, particularly female faculty. This research can also tell us whether departments with a higher overall number of dependents and employed spouses will be associated with higher job satisfaction in faculty with children and employed spouses, and if there is a difference in job satisfaction between male and female faculty.
M.S.: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Email: smakinejad1@unl.edu
