Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Care in Chemical Engineering

Research suggests that the ethic of care is a key ingredient to learner-centered teaching and can support diverse student success [1]. Faculty may feel they show care through rigor, by holding a high standard and providing critical feedback to prepare students for harsh work environments. Students, especially from groups underrepresented in engineering, may interpret this stance as information indicating that they do not fit in the discipline. This paper investigated how chemical engineering faculty aimed to show care to students. Specifically, we analyzed faculty policies, transcripts of faculty meetings, interviews, and email exchanges, categorizing specific beliefs and practices using the organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) framework [2]. We overlay OCB with the framework by Scott [3] that intersects criticality of feedback with relationship building. We found that most faculty demonstrated OCBs of altruism and conscientiousness. They cared deeply about student success and invested time and effort in supporting students. However, some faculty did so in line with rigor, but in ways that did not demonstrate sportsmanship, courtesy, and civic virtue in their accounts of and interactions with students. In line with Scott's framework, those who also demonstrated civic virtue were able to demand much from students, who in turn rose to meet high expectations.