Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2016
Abstract
There is only 14% of graduates that have had professors who cared for them as persons, made them excited about learning and encouraged them to pursue their dreams, reported a study from Gallup and Purdue University (2015). The purpose of this qualitative research was to generate a grounded theory to comprehend the concept of “inspiring professor” in Mexico. The question to be answered which originated this research was “what are the characteristics of professors who inspire students?”. Thirty- nine professors were interviewed, 19 of them were identified as “truly inspiring” by students. The findings that distinguish inspiring professors are: they are satisfied and proud of being professors; they have passion, philosophy of excellence and reading and watching TV as common hobbies; they take care of their students on a one-on-one basis, they analyze their groups in order to establish the best possible way to communicate with them, they give a formality to the professor-student relation and their family is a priority; and at some point, they have had high impact negative experiences in their lives. This research will contribute to the scarce literature about inspiring professors’ characteristics in Mexico. Our findings should be of interest to universities and government agencies hoping to motivate and to retain more students in the higher education level.
Keywords
universities and colleges--Mexico--faculty, education, higher, Weatherhead School of Management, inspiring professors, ideal self, social identity group, emotional intelligence, hope, efficacy, compassion, engagement, well-being, leadership, inspiration
Rights
© The Author(s). This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Department/Center
Design & Innovation
Recommended Citation
Barco, Ivone Juárez, "Understanding the Concept of "Inspiring Professors" in Mexico" (2016). Student Scholarship. 516.
https://commons.case.edu/studentworks/516