Building a Community of Excellence - Building a Faculty of Excellence: The Year of the Faculty
Strengthening faculty distinction is one of the main themes in Emory’s Strategic Plan. Emory recognizes the importance of the faculty to its overall excellence in teaching, learning, and scholarship. Faculty shape the university’s academic direction through their contributions to the educational and scholarly environment. An outstanding faculty attracts exceptional undergraduate and graduate students, provides role models for the next generation of scholars, and creates new knowledge for the advancement of humanity.
Emory has begun investing strategic resources to build a faculty of excellence that will be competitive at the domestic and international level and that significantly will impact the future of higher education. To achieve faculty distinction, it is important for Emory to foster a culture that values and supports faculty excellence. We must celebrate, reward, and retain distinguished faculty and recruit promising scholars.
As part of the Year of the Faculty, Emory has initiated a number of initiatives and continues developing creative ways to achieve faculty distinction. This will also have a significant impact on the students at the graduate and undergraduate level, including the student faculty ratio. Among the initiatives in this area are:
Faculty Distinction Fund
This $35 million fund will allow for dramatic support for faculty distinction. More specifically, the fund will allow for the:
- recruitment of outstanding scholars, including those enhancing faculty diversity
- retention of outstanding scholars
This fund is supplemented with $10 million for equipment.
Center for Faculty Excellence
As part of the Center for Faculty Excellence, the University Advisory Council on Teaching proposed a Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Teaching and Learning at Emory (CASTLE).
Faculty Development
Emory has a wide range of faculty development programs at the central as well as at the academic unit level. These include the:
- University Teaching Fund
- University Research Committee
- Academic Exchange
- Manuscript Development Program
- Conference Subvention Fund
- Faculty mentoring and seminars
- Faculty nominations for national academies and prestigious scholarly awards such as Guggenheim Fellowships and the National Humanities Medal
Promotion and Tenure Actions
Promotion and tenure processes are being reviewed to facilitate the advancement of outstanding faculty through the professional ranks and optimizing the use of faculty time. A dialogue has begun across the university to consider ways of defining faculty excellence and assessing faculty trajectories.
