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Provost Office Faculty Development Annual Report

Fiscal Year 2021-2022

Provost Office Faculty Development at UVA focused largely on leadership development and diversity, equity, and inclusion during the 2021-2022 academic year. Responses to the COACHE faculty survey, as well as low participation in professional development offerings for junior faculty during 2021 because of faculty burnout during the pandemic, led us to focus our efforts toward systemic change to support faculty throughout the faculty lifecycle. We plan to offer more in-person workshops for junior faculty during 2022-2023, as well as Faculty Writing Retreats during Summer, 2023. We hope that more faculty will be willing and able to attend in the coming year.

Faculty development initiatives during 2021-2022 included:

  • New Faculty Orientation, August 17th This two-day intensive orientation serves as an holistic introduction to life as a UVA faculty member, balancing topics between expectations of faculty at UVA, their role in serving the mission of UVA, and resources to support them in their careers.
  • Leadership in Academic Matters (LAM) Program: We offered this weekly semester-long leadership development course for leaders nominated from across UVA in both fall, 2021, and spring, 2022. Topics covered include: Leading from Mission and Values, Negotiations, Difficult Conversations, Rethinking Diversity, Giving Effective Feedback, and Financial Decision-making.
  • We offer Leadership Coaching for LAM alumni and other UVA leaders by request. In addition, Assistant Vice Provost Knight provides one-on-one confidential Leadership Coaching for all LAM participants, drawing on their Leadership Practices Inventory 360 Assessment results.
  • Leadership Development Event (“LAM Quarterly”) for LAM alumni and other UVA leaders:“ Leading in 21st Century Higher Education”, Dr. Sharon Fries-Britt, University of Maryland — funded by the Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  • National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity Institutional Membership This institutional membership is administered through our office. The membership is co-sponsored by Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. This institutional membership grants free individual membership to all UVA employees and graduate students. The resource includes helpful, research-based webinars about balancing your time as a faculty member, structuring your writing program, and countering some common psychological and institutional barriers to faculty success.
  • NCFDD Faculty Success Program: Our office co-sponsored the participation of twenty UVA faculty in this online National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity faculty success program with the Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
  • Department Chair and Associate Dean Leadership Development Workshop: Equitable Faculty Workloads
    • We offered this workshop--based on the publications and research of Kerry Ann O’Meara and the Faculty Workload and Rewards Project - to help department chairs and associate deans understand the need for structuring service workload assignments and accountability in ways that allow for equitable workloads across gender and race.
  • Equitable Faculty Workload Pilot:
    • Our office invited department chairs and associate deans to participate in an advisory group to develop a transparent workload dashboard for faculty from across UVA
    • After meeting throughout the spring semester, we have a pilot dashboard and the technology to support it ready to socialize with the associate deans and faculty. This will include education about the research on inequities in service workloads—particularly by gender—and evidence-based practices to make workloads more equitable.
  • Leadership toward Racial Equity Place-based Seminar June 6-10, 2022
    • We offered this weeklong seminar about the history of race at UVA and in Charlottesville for 25 leaders from across UVA, with the focus on how they might incorporate attention and effective actions toward racial equity in their respective leadership roles at the University. Presentations by local experts, experiential learning, and structured reflection led by a facilitation team resulted in outstanding outcomes for all participants. We will follow up with alumni of the program to continue to build their skills and network of support for this work.
  • Atlantic Coast Conference Academic Leadership Network:
    • We recruit and support five leaders from UVA to participate in the ACC Academic Leadership Network during each academic year. Participation involves three conferences on different ACC campuses each year.
    • UVA will host 90 leaders representing all ACC Universities for ACC ALN leadership development conference at UVA October 6th-8th, 2022.
  • Promotion and Tenure Committee Workshops to Mitigate the Impact of Bias: These workshops draw on social science research about the presence of gender and racial bias in evaluation of employees, and particularly faculty, and higher education research about best practices to mitigate the impact of these biases in evaluation of faculty for promotion and tenure. Workshops were conducted by request in 2022 for:
    • the Provost Office P&T Committee,
    • the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences P&T Committee,
    • the School of Nursing P&T Committee,
    • the School of Data Science P&T Committee,
    • the Arts and Sciences Departmental P&T Committees, and
    • the School of Education P&T Committee.

These workshops draw on social science research about the presence of gender and racial bias in the search processes for faculty, and higher education research about best practices to mitigate the impact of these biases during the search process. They were offered by request to many departments and schools throughout 2022.

  • Postdoctoral Fellow in Faculty Affairs: We hired a postdoctoral research fellow who focused her research on best practices for mentoring junior faculty—particularly faculty from underrepresented identities.
  • Mini - grants to Enhance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Faculty at UVA:
    • With the understanding that faculty and staff in particular units at the University would have creative, specific ideas of how to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion in their particular contexts, we sent out a request for proposals from any UVA faculty or staff member for mini-grants of up to $10,000. We received twelve applications and funded seven of those, based on their originality, scope of impact, and evidence-based potential for success.
    • Grant recipients are from the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Engineering and Society in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Health Sciences Library, the Office of Diversity and Community Engagement in UVA Health, the Department of Neuroscience, and the School of Architecture. The funds have been distributed, and we have asked for reports about their outcomes by the end of the fiscal year.