THE FACULTY AREN'T ALRIGHT: FACULTY STRESS INCREASED OVER THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID-19

Higher education faculty stress was exacerbated by the pandemic. While COVID-19 was an obvious stressor for anyone in a teaching position, there were a number of other factors that remain relatively unexamined. For instance, many full and part-time faculty members, also known as adjunct faculty, were subject to possible lay-offs and full-time faculty suddenly became heavily relied on to be mentors to their less technologically savvy peers. The American Council on Education found that mental health of faculty and staff was one of the top three most pressing issues for university and college presidents between April 2020 and July 2020 (Turk et al., 2020). However, the messaging being sent by higher education administrative officials reflected the exact opposite, with negative consequences on the mental health of its faculty members. It would be expected that perceived stress, "feelings or thoughts that an individual has about how much stress they are under at a given point in time or over a given time period" (Phillips, 2013, p. 1453), would increase for both full-time and part-time faculty members during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty members were hoping for reassurances from their higher education institutional leadership, but instead received uncertain or negative communications that further contributed to their perceived stress.