Faculty interviews. All of the interviews with faculty members occurred in their
offices at a time mutually agreed upon by the researcher and the faculty member through
email or phone communication. Most faculty members seemed relaxed and appeared to
feel comfortable talking openly about their experience at McFeely related to their
understanding of and involvement with student affairs, collaborative learning, and
various aspects of the institution’s culture. Interviews lasted, generally, between 45
minutes to one hour. Over the course of these interviews, several key themes emerged.
Theme 1: Faculty members could easily articulate their primary role on campus
and have similar and consistent developmental goals for their students. Each faculty
member interview began, after basic introductory and demographic questions, with the
researcher asking the faculty member being interviewed what he or she felt his or her
primary role on campus was. For every faculty respondent the answer was essentially the
same: teaching. Eric Booher summed it up succinctly, “certainly teacher first.”