2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

“Once you get tenure, it's a lot easier”: The impact of tenure on approaches to conflict in research teams

Presented at Faculty Development Division (FDD) WIP Roundtable Session 1

The benefits of interdisciplinary teams have been well-documented; however, epistemological backgrounds and methodological approaches to research vary by discipline, often creating conflict on such teams. Many factors influence how interdisciplinary research teams may approach conflict; for teams comprised of individuals across a spectrum of ranks or titles (e.g., graduate students, pre-tenured faculty, tenured faculty), power is a critical element that can either exacerbate or mitigate instances of conflict. However, limited scholarship has examined how power from tenure – or the lack thereof – influences how individuals on interdisciplinary research teams navigate conflict. Using French and Raven's conception of legitimate or positional power, we analyzed data from interviews with six faculty to explore how power derived from tenure – or a lack thereof – to explore how tenure influences the ways in which individuals on interdisciplinary research teams navigate conflict. Results indicate that pre-tenured faculty recognized that they lacked power to shape the direction of their research teams, resulting from two types of treatment perpetuated by tenured faculty – 1) junior faculty were not trusted or allowed to engage in meaningful work on certain projects, and 2) some pre-tenured faculty felt that their need to fulfill tenure requirements were used against them, which tenured faculty took advantage of. Yet, half of the participants in the study noted that they employed subversive strategies to contribute to their research teams. Results from this study indicate that tenured faculty can take advantage of the power differential with pre-tenured faculty, creating situations where pre-tenured faculty either complete work without recognition or engage in subversive acts to contribute to research, creating unnecessarily arduous paths to tenure.

Authors

Danielle Vegas Lewis http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7266-6328 [biography]

Dr. Danielle Vegas Lewis is currently a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo. Her research agenda aims to understand and disrupt the ways in which socially constructed identities allow for the reproduction of social inequality, with a focus on understanding the ways institutions of higher education and other social structures challenge or uphold hegemonic environments in which majority populations accumulate power that harms students underrepresented in certain contexts.
Lorna Treffert University at Buffalo, The State University of New York [biography]

Lorna Treffert is a 3rd year Ph.D. candidate in Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo. She recieved her bachelors and masters in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Tennessee - Knoxville. Her research interests include exploring the structural and interpersonal factors which promote intellectual risk taking within engineering and engineering education contexts.
Dr. Courtney June Faber http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9156-7616 University at Buffalo, The State University of New York [biography]

Courtney Faber, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo (UB). Prior to joining UB in August of 2023, she was a Research Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Engineering Fundamentals at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She was also the Director of the Fundamentals of Engineering and Computing Teaching in Higher Education Certificate Program. Her research focuses on empowering engineering education scholars to be more effective at impacting transformational change in engineering and developing educational experiences that consider epistemic thinking. She develops and uses innovative research methods that allow for deep investigations of constructs such as epistemic thinking, identity, and agency. Dr. Faber has a B.S. in Bioengineering and a Ph.D. in Engineering and Science Education from Clemson University and a M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Cornell University. Among other awards for her research, she was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2022 to study epistemic negotiations on interdisciplinary engineering education research teams.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

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