| With a growth in the American culinary industry and an estimated addition of 1.3 million culinary related jobs by 2020, the field of culinary arts education seeks qualified chefs with a wealth of culinary expertise and knowledge. A new instructor's inability to transition successfully into his or her role may cause new faculty members to leave their institution or the profession itself. There is an increased demand to replace instructors who leave the occupation and a need to inform an explanation of ways to manage this transition. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the subjective perceptions and lived experiences of six new culinary arts instructors who made the transition from practicing chefs to postsecondary educators at an institution in South Carolina that offers a degree in culinary arts. A paucity of research focuses specifically on the transition from chef to educator so the current study was developed to fill a void in the existing literature by documenting the first-hand perspectives of new culinary arts educators' transition into academia, thus gaining insight on how they managed and what factors acted as facilitators or hindrances during this transition. The participants reported that positive transition factors included received development opportunities, available resources, work/life balance, and internal institutional support. Negative transition factors included not feeling prepared to teach, a lack of formal feedback about their performance, and experiencing a deficient or non-existent on-boarding. Findings from this study emphasize a need to prepare new culinary arts instructors for their teaching role. An understanding of these lived experiences could inform academic leaders, college staff members, and instructors of strategies designed to facilitate ideal adjustment to, and functioning in, the new academic role, to meet new educators' needs, and to create a more effective on-boarding into academia, and therefore provide a basis for action in retaining new faculty. Practical applications and recommendations include: Implementing a formal culinary arts-specific new faculty orientation, providing teaching-focused faculty development opportunities, creating a formal mentor program, and opportunities for early performance feedback. Recommendations for future research are also provided. |
