What do university students understand about faculty work? Undergraduate (mostly first-year) students (N = 317) at a research university gave definitions of tenure, estimated how much time faculty spend teaching, and rated fictional faculty members. Most students could define tenure but could not describe how it is earned or its role in academic…

Full-time teaching-focused faculty at research universities may hold alternative titles such as Assistant Teaching Professor, Instructor, or Lecturer. We manipulated the title of a fictitious faculty target to investigate how such titles are perceived. Student and lay respondents (N = 317) respected and liked all targets, and their ratings did not…