Faculty members rated faculty to student interactions and relationships significantly more positive than students.
To assess the ethical climate of undergraduate academic programs, this study examined faculty to student, student to faculty, and student to student interactions and relationships through the application of five ethical principles (Brown & Krager, 1985).
Of the original 58 ECI faculty to student items, 18 items were deleted, 8 items were revised, and 1 new item was added for a total of 41 UECI items.
On the faculty to student subscale, five items were deleted, and another four items were reworded.
For example, on the UECI faculty to student subscale there are 36 items.
The dependent variables were the mean scores on the Retention Scale and each of the three UECI subscales: faculty to student, student to faculty, and student to student.
The means and standard deviations for the UECI subscale that measures faculty to student interactions and relationships broken down by position and major area are listed in Table 3.
Across academic areas, faculty and student perceptions of the ethical climate of the undergraduate programs ranged from 3.98 (sometimes to often true) to 4.32 (often to always true) for the UECI faculty to student subscale.
The only difference between faculty and student perceptions of the ethical climate occurred on the UECI faculty to student subscale.
To make changes to enhance the ethical climate, the researchers pinpointed the differences between faculty and student perceptions on the UECI faculty to student subscale by examining the differences between faculty and student mean scores for each of the 36 items of the subscale.
Thus, faculty members at the surveyed university should be informed of the previously listed UECI faculty to student subscale items where there were meaningful differences between faculty and student perceptions so that they can make changes to enhance the ethical climate.