Emory Report
March 30, 2009
Volume 61, Number 25

Center for Faculty Development and Excellence upcoming events

APRIL 1
CFDE Reception and Workshop: Faculty Creativity Over the Life Cycle: Narratives From Emory Colleagues.
5 p.m. Jones Room, Woodruff Library. dtroka@emory.edu.

APRIL 2
Book Proposal Basics Brown Bag.
Noon p.m.
200 White Hall. egallu@emory.edu.

APRIL 7

Civil Discourse and Addressing Differences in the Classroom.
11:45 a.m. Jones Room, Woodruff Library. dtroka@emory.edu.

APRIL 17
The Art of Publishing:
An Economics Department All-day Workshop.
9–5:30 a.m. 231 Goizueta Business School. klorch@emory.edu.

MAY 12–15

3rd Annual Institute for Pedagogy in the Liberal Arts. Oxford College.
jgalle@emory.edu.

MAY 18–25 & 26–28

13th Annual Pedagogy Seminar.
9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. dtroka@emory.edu.

 

   

Emory Report homepage  

March 30
, 2009
Center for faculty will boost teaching

By KiM Urquhart

From teaching consultations to writing workshops, the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence is for the first time uniting Emory’s central resources for faculty development. Created to provide support for faculty in the three key areas of academic life: teaching, research and institution building, the center launched this spring with the aim of building intellectual community and helping faculty grow throughout their career.

The faculty-led center is “coming into being through practice, as well as conceptualization,” explains director Laurie Patton, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Early Indian Religions, with a core operating principle that the faculty will help shape its programming.

“We want to focus our conversations and programs on two key areas: faculty creativity over the life cycle, and faculty distinction,” says Patton, who accepted the three-year appointment as the center’s first director based on her interest in faculty support and building intellectual community.

The center was created with existing funds as an institutional response to a strong call by the faculty to address issues of teaching and learning across the University, notes Claire Sterk, senior vice provost for academic affairs.

It incorporates many of the teaching resources and teacher-training materials offered in previous years by the University Advisory Council on Teaching and other University-wide teaching programs.

“Most of the activities that are being coordinated, stimulated and triggered by the center are bringing together programs that already existed,” like the University Research Council, which for decades has helped faculty launch and fund projects, or the (now expanded) author development program, where faculty turn for support with publishing, says Sterk. “What the center does is bring them together, integrate them across the University and thereby try to generate new activity.”

New programs in development include a Distinguished Teaching Fellows program, teaching and administrative consultations, faculty focus groups and public scholarship. Programs across the University will include

strategic plan-based interdisciplinary seminar programs and an annual Community of Learners conference.
The center’s spring events — five so far — have generated strong interest, with high attendance and positive feedback, says Project Coordinator Donna Troka.

An English as Second Language workshop with the Center for Teaching and Curriculum, for example, “gathered for the first time under one roof people from across the University who are doing this kind of work,” says Troka. She noted cross-fertilization as one outcome of the successful workshop. A follow-up discussion is set for March 30, based on feedback from the participant evaluations, key to informing the center’s activities.

“We are thrilled to have so many engaged participants at our workshops,” says Troka, “and we look forward to the continued building of a community of excellent scholars and teachers at Emory.”


Faculty Distinction Fund update
The creation of the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence is an important facet in the University’s Strategic Plan initiative to Strengthen Faculty Distinction; another is the Faculty Distinction Fund.

To celebrate, reward and retain distinguished faculty and recruit promising scholars, the Strategic Plan includes a Faculty Distinction Fund dedicated to the retention and recruitment of outstanding scholars. The fund also serves to encourage diversity, enhance faculty concentration in targeted areas, create structures for dual career couples and partner hiring, and plan for faculty retirements in a competitive labor market.

Through the Faculty Distinction Fund, Emory has recruited 28 faculty, “all excellent scholars, distributed across disciplines, and in various stages of their career,” says Claire Sterk, senior vice provost for academic affairs.

Faculty funded

• Funded: 28 (Requests: 42)

Distribution of FDF-supported faculty recruitment
• Emory College: 13
• School of Medicine: 8
• School of Public Health: 5
• Theology: 1

Dean’s packages for law, business, and nursing included faculty recruitment funds.

Diversity of FDF-supported faculty recruitment
• Emory College: Equal between men and women and 4/13 non-white
• School of Medicine: All male and 1/8 non-white
• School of Public Health: All male and 3/5 non-white
• Theology: All male and white

Data provided by the Office of Academic Affairs.

Learn more about Emory’s faculty at www.emory.edu/PROVOST/greatscholars.