Identifying and Prioritizing the Variable Dimensions of Leading Professors in Babol University of Medical Sciences

The quality of education and research is one of the concerns that academic systems always strive to achieve. Undoubtedly, the existence of leading professors with appropriate scientific and ethical competencies is one of the effective fundamental factors in the quality of higher education systems.

The general purpose of the present study is to examine the dimensions of leading professors and determine the importance and priority of these goals. In terms of purpose, this research is an application that was done with a mixed approach (qualitative and quantitative) with an exploratory design. In the qualitative approach, the content analysis method was used and in the quantitative approach, the descriptive survey method was used. The statistical population consisted of 20 professors of Babol University of Medical Sciences in the qualitative department and 348 faculty members of Babol University of Medical Sciences in the quantitative department. Taking the saturation law, 10 people and in the quantitative part, based on Cochran's formula, 183 people were selected as a statistical sample using stratified random sampling method based on scientific rank. By analyzing the qualitative data, a researcher-made questionnaire designed by leading professors with 80 questions was designed. Data were analyzed by structural equation modeling in SPSS-23 and PLS-2 software.

The results showed that; Leading professors have three dimensions: "educational, research and individual".

Educational dimension with five components (teaching skills, educational technology, education management, evaluation skills and observance of educational rules), research dimension with two components (scholarship and research ethics) and individual dimension with five components (characteristics Appearance is professional ethics, honesty, creativity and discipline) which has a greater impact on the educational dimension with a factor load of 0.963 and a research dimension with a factor load of 0.894.