In partnership with the Division of Academic and Student Affairs and the Division of Research and Federal Relations, the U.S. Department of Education-funded Center for University Scholars hosted the Faculty Engagement and Advancement Program (FEAP) for three years as an outgrowth of the JSU ADVANCE project’s efforts to improve the climate and culture at JSU.

Purpose
The program included interactive workshops, panel discussions, and presentations by guest speakers. These activities engaged faculty at various stages in their careers in pursuing excellence in research, teaching, and service and provided new JSU faculty a way to become engaged in the intellectual life of the University.

Audience
The Faculty Engagement and Advancement Program was designed to support faculty development across all levels of faculty. The program encouraged new faculty to participate in campus life and to work to develop their research, teaching, and scholarly agendas.

Design

• Goals:
• • To promote career-long faculty development in scholarly and creative activities as well as in professional development activities.
• • To coordinate all on-campus faculty development activities in line with the University’s strategic priorities for quality faculty development.

• Objectives:
• • To provide junior faculty with an introduction to career development best-practices.
• • To provide support for faculty professional development in the areas of teaching, research, and service to the profession.
• • To provide a venue for on-campus experts to share their experience with faculty colleagues.

• Activities:
• • Each year began with the New Faculty Orientation as the first event in the Faculty Engagement and Enhancement Program.
• • On average, 16 workshops were sponsored each year, on topics that included tenure and promotion requirements, the scholarship of teaching and learning, grant writing and grant management, online pedagogy, teaching with technology, developing multi-institutional collaborations, and many others.
• • When funding permitted, external experts and scholars were brought to campus to lead workshops and enrich the Center’s offerings.

IMPACT

• Outcomes:
• • Over the three years of the program, 1094 faculty attended workshops and presentations.
• • During the program, 48 separate events were sponsored by the Center, and each year evaluations completed by faculty participants helped shape the next year’s programming.

LESSONS LEARNED

• • The program was initially envisioned as a year-long orientation to campus life for new faculty. However, new faculty were not required to attend sessions. One valuable lesson from this program has been the need to coordinate with the Office of Academic Affairs to determine how new faculty participation in on-campus training will be evaluated during yearly faculty evaluations or in the promotion and tenure process.
• • Many of the programs were essentially panel discussions by on-campus experts in a variety of areas. However, the best evaluation scores from faculty participants came from those sessions that involved hands-on workshop activities. Much like students, faculty seem to be more engaged when they are involved in active learning.
• • The most heavily attended sessions were always those related to teaching with specific technologies or pedagogy related to online learning. At JSU, faculty spend a large percentage of their time on teaching. So one direction that may need to be added to the program is additional emphasis on doing research on teaching (the scholarship of teaching and learning) to marry faculty research to their enthusiasm for teaching innovation.