Faculty Community Building in Virtual Social Work Education Sara L. Schwartz, PhD; June L. Wiley, PhD; Charles D. Kaplan, PhD; Eugenia L. Weiss, PhD University of Southern California, School of Social Work INTRODUCTION Virtual education creates a paradigm shift in social work, with students, educators and administrators establishing new roles and responsibilities in an environment that is no longer grounded in a static location. Faculty are tasked with not only developing new ways to engage and instruct virtual students, but also to engage and collaborate with colleagues living in diverse locations. Given our profession’s emphasis on understanding the person-in-environment, it is essential to consider faculty experiences as employees in virtual work spaces. The objective of this research is to explore the perspectives and experiences of instructors teaching in the University of Southern California’s Virtual Academic Center. RESEARCH METHODS Exploratory Research Design Qualitative Methods Non-probability purposive and quota sampling strategies; electronic recruitment 25 semi-structured telephone interviews completed Informed consent retrieved; anonymity provided Audio-recorded using a smart-phone application and uploaded to Dropbox Transcribed interviews uploaded to Nvivo 10 for thematic analysis Grounded Theory techniques Open Coding of Interviews 1-12 resulted in initial codebook of 48 nodes Selective coding of Interviews resulted in theoretical saturation and reduced codebook of 21 nodes Independent selective coding of Interviews validated nodes and themes Coding Interviews in an Analytic Seminar produced agreement on thematic schema presented RESULTS Sample Description 25 interviews completed; 52% response rate 48% adjunct faculty (N=12) 28% clinical teaching faculty (N=7) 20% tenure line faculty (N=5) 4% field faculty (N=1) 84% Female 68% White, 16% African American 64% over the age of 50 THEME 1: The Challenge of a Geographically Diverse Faculty While participants view geographic diversity of students enthusiastically, some lamented that geographic diversity of faculty creates complicated barriers for peer engagement and connections. There are some people that I interact with on the VAC that I’ve never seen in real life. I think it’s hard to feel as connected (White, Male, 50 year-old Field Faculty). Teaching on the VAC, for me, having been based both in Los Angeles and San Diego prior to being in the Virtual program, has felt pretty isolating. I have felt like I don’t have enough communication and interaction with colleagues. And I think that’s something that the school still needs very much to work on because we have lots and lots of faculty all the way across the country that must be feeling more isolated and sometimes, just ignorant of what is going on, probably even more than I do, because at least I do have those personal connections with the campuses whereas a lot of our faculty don’t (White, Female, 70s, Clinical Teaching Faculty). But I think it’s hard to build relationships because we just don’t really have a context for each other. I mean we could pass each other tomorrow and have no idea (White, Female, 30s, Tenure-Line).

Faculty Community Building in Virtual Social Work Education Sara L. Schwartz, PhD; June L. Wiley, PhD; Charles D. Kaplan, PhD; Eugenia L. Weiss, PhD University of Southern California, School of Social Work RESULTS CONTINUED Theme 2: Community Building Among Faculty Building a shared identity and creating community was viewed as important to most participants. A large faculty, lack of informal communication and opportunities to collaborate were cited as challenges; however, respondents express enthusiasm for discovering new ways for virtual community building. To me, it seems like we should explore more and be open to the fact that yeah, it’s just different. You get to engage in that way when it’s live, but how do you build a sense of community that is as rich, as rewarding, with your students and your colleagues when you do it online and feel that it is just as good, if not better than meeting on the ground (Male, African-American, 40s, Tenured). Some examples through the wellness committee we started the virtual road to wellness so it had nothing to do with so it had to do with so we are all doing this fun thing together and you could participate wherever you were. So you felt like you were part of something other than going to a faculty meeting and going to learn about unit 12 (Female, White, 50s, Adjunct). I think, the whole school has gotten so huge that I think we ought to look to other groups and even very successful high schools that have thousands of students. They create houses, if that makes sense (Female, White, late 60s, Tenured). CONCLUSIONS REFERENCES While faculty applaud the geographic diversity of students in the classroom, there is a clear dissonance in the way that geography is experienced among faculty in virtual learning environments. Geography is identified as a considerable barrier to community building and collaboration among faculty, fostering a sense of alienation and disconnect among faculty Future Research Findings warrant a reconceptualization of geographic diversity within virtual social work education to visualize opportunities for recruiting and supporting a faculty with unique interests, expertise and experiences in diverse communities Institutional opportunities for virtual networking and community-building should be created, implemented and evaluated in order to foster cohesion among faculty. Future research is essential to identify and develop best practices for virtual faculty engagement. Cappiccie, A. & Desrosiers, P. (2011). Lessons learned from using adobe connect in the social work classroom. Journal of Technology in Human Services, 29, Flynn, M., Maiden, R.P., Smith, W., Wiley, J. & Wood, G. (2013). Launching the Virtual Academic Center: Issues and challenges in innovation. Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 33(4-5), doi: / Smith, W. (2015). Relational dimensions of virtual social work education: Mentoring faculty in a web-based learning environment. Clinical Social Work Journal, 43, doi: /s