The Center for Faculty Development offers a number of programs and events which may be specifically useful for early career faculty.
TILT: Boost retention and belonging through minor adjustments
Wed, Apr 12 | 11:00–12:30 | In person | Hunthausen 110 | Tea, coffee, and snacks provided
OR
Tue, Apr 18 | 2:00–3:30 | In person | Hunthausen 110 | Tea, coffee, and snacks provided
Co-facilitated by David Green and Andrea Verdan
Transparent Design in Learning and Teaching (TILT) is a teaching approach involving a minor redesign of assignments that helps students better understand how and why they are learning course content.
TILT has been shown to benefit both students and faculty. For students, TILT boosts students’ sense of belonging, retention, and academic achievement, with additional gains in achievement for students from underrepresented backgrounds. For faculty, implementing TILT results in higher-quality student work, allowing faculty to feel greater satisfaction in their grading and teaching, as well as saved time.
This quarter, we are prioritizing introductory courses in any degree program. This is because the TILT research has found that students continue to benefit for at least two years from their first experience of TILT. And even if you’re not teaching an intro course, you’re very welcome to join us!
Please remember to bring with you a copy of an upcoming assignment to apply the TILT approach to. You might want to focus on assignments where you’re disappointed with students’ performance, where you get a lot of push-back or questions from students, or where you find student motivation lacking.
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Open Educational Resources: Ensuring Equitable Student Access to Course Material
Tue, Apr 18 | 11:00–12:30 | In person | Hunthausen 110
Co-sponsored by the Open Education Task Force
Co-facilitated by Lydia Bello (Library), Kathryn Bollich-Ziegler (Psychology), and Heather Brown (Biology)
As textbook costs rise, students are increasingly forced to choose between paying for necessities and paying for required course materials. Open educational resources — teaching and learning materials that can be freely accessed and adapted — are an alternative to these traditionally expensive materials and give you increased flexibility in your course design. Open resources offer an opportunity to lower costs and increase equity without compromising learning outcomes.
This workshop will review the challenges students face in affording course materials and discuss how open textbooks and other open educational resources can begin to address affordability challenges. You will also hear from faculty who have implemented open materials in their courses and learn about an opportunity to review an item in the Open Textbook Library (voluntary—stipend provided!).
During this workshop, you will:
The workshop is designed for individuals with any level of knowledge of open educational resources.
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Thursdays: Apr 20 and May 4 with a third in-person date TBD by the group | 12:30–1:30 | Via Zoom (with a final in-person gathering) | Zoom link provided upon registration
Facilitated by Katherine Raichle
The Center for Faculty Development will be offering an affinity group for faculty parents of school-age children. The purpose of this group is to provide a space to discuss and explore the unique challenges faced by faculty who have children in their care. The challenge of parenting while maintaining a rigorous schedule of teaching, research, and/or service to the university is not new. However, for many, the benefits of finding a community of support around parenting has never been more urgent. We faced unprecedented demands of caregiving and schooling while balancing the work of our academic lives during the Covid-19 pandemic. The return to in-person work for ourselves and in-person school for our children has offered sources of consolation and desolation over the past year or so. Let’s convene and share where we are during this time and find ways to support one another.
The psychological benefits of convening groups of people around common identities and experiences are well known. Research on affinity groups, in particular, has shown that they enhance agency and optimism, while also providing access to beneficial information and support.
At its most basic level, we hope that this group offers a space where you can feel less isolated in your experience. We hope to foster a community of support amongst faculty parents, where they can share experiences, offer suggestions, and explore how to navigate these extremely challenging times.
*Note: if you are interested in this group but cannot make the time scheduled, please email faculty-development@seattleu.edu and let us know. We would like to support all faculty parents during this challenging time and will work with you to find ways to offer support.
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Unraveling faculty burnout: Pathways to reckoning and renewal
Mondays: Apr 24, May 8, and May 22 | 11:00–12:15 | In person | Casey 220 | 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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Tuesdays: Apr 25, May 9, and May 23 | 2:00–3:00 | In person | Lemieux Library 409 (subject to change) | Tea and coffee provided
Co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion
Facilitated by Gabriel Saucedo (Accounting)
The Center for Faculty Development and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion are excited to announce the continuation of an affinity group for tenure-track faculty of color. The purpose of convening the group is to provide a space for the collective exploration of the impact of race, power, and privilege on the academic life of colleagues immersed in teaching, scholarship, and service at pre-tenure stages of their careers.
There are three primary reasons. First, the Task Force on Diversity and Inclusive Excellence report recommends boosting our capacity to retain talented minoritized faculty and facilitate professional development opportunities. Second, research on affinity groups indicates they enhance participants’ agency and optimism, while providing access to beneficial information and support. Third, from our own conversations with members of the Seattle University community, we know that faculty of color need a space where they can discuss their unique experiences in a supportive environment with peers who are similarly situated.
This professional development opportunity aims to empower tenure-track faculty of color to build community, share experiences, and pursue their academic life with more confidence and agency. We hope that this caucus process gives participants the space to determine “what solidarity could look like for...as people of color committed to the work of social, racial, and gender justice” (Kad Smith, Compass Point) at Seattle University.
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Some swings are misses: A celebration of risk-taking in the Academy
Thu, Apr 20 | 3:30–5:00 | In person | Hunthausen 110 | Appetizers, beer, wine, and non-alcoholic beverages will be served
Co-sponsored by the Office of Sponsored Projects and the Center for Jesuit Education
Hosted by David Green, Katherine Raichle, and Andrea Verdan
Spring is typically the time of year when universities around the country are looking back and toasting the successes of the past 12 months.
Less celebrated – but no less important – are all those instances of risk-taking over the past 12 months that didn’t lead to the results we had hoped for, such as
Academia is full of such moments, yet we rarely acknowledge them publicly. As author Helen Sword (2017, p. 178) writes, “habitual risk takers understand that failure, too, is worth celebrating,” and with that in mind, the Center for Faculty Development, Office of Sponsored Projects, and Center for Jesuit Education are co-sponsoring this celebration of risk-taking. This is a chance for us to toast our valiant efforts, recognizing that – to quote Einstein – “Failure is success in progress.”
For this informal reception and celebration to go ahead, we need confirmation of at least 30 “swings that were misses” from attending faculty. So when you register, be sure to let us know what miss(es) we can anonymously add to the list.
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The "Personal Intellectual Project": Capturing, focusing, and (re)inventing your scholarly agenda
Tue, May 2 | 2:00–3:30 | In person | Casey Commons (CASY 530) | Tea and coffee provided
Co-sponsored by the Office of Sponsored Projects
Facilitated by David Green
Spring is often the time when faculty are preparing their files for promotion or tenure, or are reflecting on their work to date to help clarify their summer projects.
Yet depending on our career stage, our scholarly agenda can pose a variety of challenges. For many newer scholars, it can be hard to step back and identify exactly what we’re doing – and why it matters. For more seasoned researchers, in contrast, we often find our passions have shifted to new topics, or that we need to reinvent ourselves as scholars in somewhat different academic fields than where we began.
Difficulty in describing our research arc can affect our chances of winning grants, of being promoted, or simply of feeling in control of our own scholarship. It can lead us to take on projects that don’t exactly align with our expertise or intellectual curiosity, and to missing out on those that do.
In this session, we’ll provide a space for you to think through your own “Personal Intellectual Project”—the big-picture encapsulation of your different scholarly topics and agendas. For newer scholars, can you sense its form yet? Do you recognize the parameters you want to set to keep it manageable? For more experienced scholars, has your intellectual project evolved since you last considered it? What has changed and what remains the same? What projects might reignite your enthusiasm?
Through a structured process and through interdisciplinary small-group conversation, you’ll be better placed to advocate for yourself and your scholarship and will have a clearer vision of viable and enticing scholarly topics for the future.
Be sure to have a copy of your up-to-date CV with you for the session.
Attendees who would like to check back in on this topic can do so in an hour-long discussion and debrief.
Tue, May 16 | 2:00–3:00 | In person | Casey Commons (CASY 530) | Tea and coffee provided
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