Drawing from Archer's critical realist theory of agency, this paper has two specific aims. First, the cultural and structural features of one "striving" institution are outlined. Then, I illustrate how faculty members asserted agency inside their striving university in ways intended to disrupt the structures and cultures that striving universities produce. Forms of faculty agency included negotiating, critiquing and resisting. The work is relevant to those who study the academic profession; those who provide support and professional development to contemporary academics, especially academics serving inside striving universities; and, finally, to those interested in the study and possibility of human agency inside a higher education field that is marked by the pressures of both fiscal and cultural markets.