A faculty learning community is a group of cross-disciplinary faculty (usually 6–12 people) engaging in an active, collaborative program that meets regularly to support each participant's professional development (definition adapted from Miami University, OH). Depending on the chosen book, learning community participants may pick a focus project and agree to apply the ideas, try out innovations, and report back to the group on what they have learned.
The Center for Faculty Development provides you with a copy of the book, refreshments, and a designated “host” for your learning community. At each gathering, you’ll discuss key insights from the assigned reading, questions that arise for you while reading, and, when appropriate, the progress you're making on your own project.
Any Seattle University faculty member, part-time or full-time, can participate in the program.
The Human Element: Overcoming the resistance that awaits new ideas
Tuesdays: Oct 11, Oct 25, and Nov 8 | 1:30–2:45 | In person | HUNT 160 | Coffee and tea will be provided
Facilitated by David Green
Do you have a new idea or innovation you’d like to introduce at SU? Are you wondering how to bring your colleagues on board?
Common practice says that the best way to convince people to take up a new idea is to heighten the appeal of the idea itself. But what about the discomfort and hesitations that hold us back from changing?
In their book The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas, authors Loren Nordgren and David Schonthal call the former approach “fuel-based” and label the latter “frictions.” They explore four important frictions (inertia, effort, emotion, and reactance) and introduce readers to corresponding strategies that will help their ideas shine.
In this three-session Learning Community, facilitated by David Green (Center for Faculty Development), we'll work our way through the chapters of the book, discussing where it resonates or aggravates, where it’s immediately applicable or requires some adjustment, and we’ll consider how it might aid our own attempts to bring colleagues on board with new ideas.
Over the three sessions, you'll learn:
If you’re involved in any change initiatives on campus – whether around curricular change, systemic change, or shared governance change – then the ideas in this book could help you feel more effective and enthusiastic in your work, as well as enabling your ideas to be championed more widely. This book is also well-suited to all faculty who are full of great ideas.
The Human Element is 210 pages long, and reading will be split across the three sessions to be manageable for participants.
This learning community meets in Hunthausen 160 on:
Air & Light & Time & Space: How successful academics write
Mondays: Jan 30, Feb 13, and Feb 27 | 11:00–12:15 | In person | Casey 220 | Tea, coffee, and snacks provided
Facilitated by David Green
How do successful academics find the “air and light and time and space” (in the words of poet Charles Bukowski) to get their research done? How do they go about their writing process? And how do they summon up the courage to take intellectual risks and the resilience to deal with rejection?
From interviews with one hundred faculty members around the world, Helen Sword identifies four cornerstones that anchor any successful research and writing practice:
Building on this “BASE,” Sword illuminates the emotional complexity of the research and writing process and exposes the lack of research and writing support typically available to early career academics. She also lays to rest the myth that academics must produce safe, conventional prose or risk professional failure.
In this three-session Learning Community, facilitated by David Green (Center for Faculty Development), we’ll work our way through the chapters of the book, identifying our own writing BASEs, as well as exploring which strategies from the book draw us in and which send us running to the hills.
The successful writers profiled in the book tell stories of intellectual passions indulged, disciplinary conventions subverted, and risk-taking rewarded. Grounded in empirical research and focused on sustainable change, Sword’s book offers a customizable blueprint for refreshing your personal research and writing habits and creating a collegial environment where all writers can flourish.
Over the three sessions, you'll:
This book may be especially suited to early career faculty, as well as to faculty who are seeking to reboot their approaches to their research and writing.
Air & Light & Time & Space is 206 pages long, and reading will be split across the three sessions to be manageable for participants.
This learning community meets in Casey 220 on:
Unraveling faculty burnout: Pathways to reckoning and renewal
Mondays: Apr 24, May 8, and May 22 | 11:00–12:15 | In person | Hunthausen 110 | Tea, coffee, and snacks provided
Co-facilitated by Katherine Raichle and Andrea Verdan
In an academic culture that values productivity, competition, and external recognition, it is unsurprising when faculty—particularly women and faculty of color—find themselves stressed, overwhelmed, and weary. Left unchecked, these feelings can lead to burnout, characterized by energy depletion, work-related apathy or cynicism, and feelings of inadequacy.
In this learning community, we will read Unraveling Faculty Burnout, a book by Rebecca Pope-Ruark, who explores how we can reframe our experiences and conversations to mitigate burnout, specifically addressing the stressors unique to female and female faculty of color. From the book:
Pope-Ruark “helps faculty not only address burnout personally but also use the tools in this book to eradicate the systemic conditions that cause it in the first place. As burnout becomes more visible, we can destigmatize it by acknowledging that women are not unraveling; instead, women in higher education are reckoning with the productivity cult embedded in our institutions, recognizing how it shapes their understanding and approach to faculty work, and learning how they can remedy it for themselves, their peers, and women faculty in the future.”
In this three-session Learning Community, facilitated by Katherine Raichle (Psychology / Center for Faculty Development), and Andrea Verdan (Chemistry / Center for Faculty Development), we will discuss strategies and practices to counter burnout. In this space we invite faculty to engage in open and honest conversations about academic culture that often asks us to hide our failures, lulls, and periods of low productivity.
Over the three sessions, you'll learn about the “four pillars of burnout resilience,” as discussed in the book:
While the book focuses on female faculty and female faculty of color, this learning community is open to all faculty.
Unraveling Faculty Burnout is 256 pages long, and reading will be split across the three sessions to be manageable for participants.
This learning community meets in Casey 220 on:
Tea, coffee, and snacks will be provided at all sessions.
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