For some years now, the quality of undergraduate education has been one of the major concerns of public and private postsecondary institutions, state legislatures, the business community, parents, and students (Kerr 1994; Winston 1994). At the heart of this concern lies the issue of "who teaches undergraduates in postsecondary institutions" (Boyer Commission 1998). Although some research has been conducted to address this issue (Chen 2000; Middaugh 1999; Townsend 2000), current descriptive information regarding who teaches undergraduates at postsecondary institutions in the United States is limited. Using the most current national survey of faculty, the 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:99),¹ this report supplies such information by addressing the following three questions: 1) Who teaches undergraduates in postsecondary institutions?² 2) How much do they teach? and 3) what teaching practices do they use for their undergraduate teaching? The findings, which are summarized below, are based on a nationally representative sample of postsecondary faculty and instructional staff who reported having some instructional responsibilities for credit in fall 1998.

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