Author: NCFDD
Summer can feel deceptively open at first.
The semester ends, meetings slow down, and many faculty finally have room to think about the projects that have been difficult to sustain during the academic year. Writing goals return to the surface. Research plans that were pushed aside start demanding attention again. Fall teaching preparation creeps closer.
At the same time, summer rarely unfolds as cleanly as faculty hope it will.
Travel, conferences, caregiving responsibilities, administrative work, and recovery from the academic year all compete for attention. Many faculty begin the summer with a long list of goals and realize by July that they have spent most of their time trying to regain momentum.
That is part of why shorter, focused faculty development courses can be especially useful during the summer months. A well-timed course can provide structure around one area that has become difficult to navigate consistently, whether that involves teaching, research funding, or publication workflows.
This summer, NCFDD’s course offerings focus on several challenges faculty are actively managing across higher education: teaching in an AI-influenced environment, adapting to changes in research funding, and sustaining publication momentum.
Start With the Area That Feels Hardest to Sustain
Faculty development opportunities are often discussed broadly, as though every workshop or course serves the same purpose.
In practice, most faculty already know where they are struggling.
Sometimes the pressure point is teaching:
- assignments that suddenly feel outdated
- uncertainty around AI use policies
- grading and feedback becoming increasingly time-intensive
- difficulty balancing flexibility with academic standards
For others, the challenge is research funding:
- shifting federal priorities
- unstable funding environments
- difficulty identifying aligned opportunities
- uncertainty around long-term research planning
And for many faculty, writing projects begin piling up in partially completed stages:
- reviewer comments waiting for revision
- co-authored projects losing momentum
- drafts scattered across different stages of completion
- manuscripts that are technically active but not moving forward
Summer tends to feel more productive when faculty identify one area that deserves sustained attention instead of trying to overhaul every aspect of academic work simultaneously.
Teaching in the Age of AI Requires Ongoing Decision-Making
Faculty conversations about AI often swing between extremes. Some discussions frame AI as an unavoidable transformation of higher education. Others focus primarily on restriction and detection.
Most faculty are operating somewhere in the middle, trying to make practical decisions about teaching, workload, feedback, and course design while institutional guidance continues to evolve.
Teaching Toolkit in the Age of AI was designed around those day-to-day realities. The course focuses on sustainable approaches to teaching and assessment rather than promoting specific tools or prescribing a single philosophy around AI use in the classroom.
The course may be especially useful for faculty who are:
- redesigning assignments for fall
- rethinking assessment strategies
- trying to reduce grading and feedback burdens
- looking for adaptable approaches across disciplines
- navigating inconsistent institutional guidance around AI
Course details:
- Session 1: May 25–June 21
- Session 2: July 13–August 9
- Estimated commitment: 2–3 hours per week
The lighter weekly commitment may also make the course more manageable for faculty balancing summer research, travel, or caregiving responsibilities.
Learn more & register for Teaching Toolkit in the Age of AI here.
Research Funding Conversations Are Shifting Across Higher Education
Many faculty are reassessing how they approach research funding right now.
Federal uncertainty, changing agency priorities, and increasingly competitive grant environments have made long-term planning more difficult across disciplines. Faculty who once relied heavily on familiar funding pathways are being pushed to think more broadly about sustainability and alignment.
Rethinking Your Research Funding focuses on helping faculty explore diversified funding strategies while developing plans that fit their institutional context, research goals, and professional priorities.
The course may resonate with faculty who are:
- exploring foundation or mission-aligned funding
- trying to stabilize long-term research agendas
- early in the grant-seeking process
- reassessing funding plans after recent shifts in their field
- looking for alternatives to relying exclusively on large federal grants
Course details:
- Session 1: May 18–June 14
- Session 2: July 20–August 16
- Estimated commitment: 2–3 hours per week
With both an early and later summer session available, faculty can choose a timeline that fits their research schedule, grant deadlines, and summer workload.
Learn more & register for Rethinking Your Research Funding here.
Publication Pipelines Rarely Stall for Just One Reason
Writing productivity conversations in higher education often focus heavily on motivation and time management.
Many faculty already know how to write productively when conditions are stable. The larger challenge is usually maintaining momentum across multiple projects while teaching, research, service, and administrative work continue competing for attention.
A manuscript revision gets delayed while preparing a grant proposal. Reviewer feedback sits unanswered during conference season. Co-author timelines drift apart. Several projects remain technically active while none move forward consistently.
Building Your Publishing Pipeline focuses on helping faculty manage academic writing across the full lifecycle of publication, including:
- tracking projects across different stages
- identifying where manuscripts stall
- maintaining momentum across multiple projects
- creating systems that support long-term publication consistency
Course details:
- June 22–July 18
- Registration closes June 18
- Estimated commitment: 2–3 hours per week
For faculty who spend early summer recovering from the academic year, attending conferences, or focusing on fieldwork and research travel, the timing may fit naturally into the second half of the summer.
Learn more & register for Building Your Publishing Pipeline here.
Choosing Support That Matches the Work Ahead
Different parts of academic work tend to become more difficult at different moments in the year.
Sometimes the pressure shows up in teaching. Sometimes it surfaces through stalled writing projects, uncertainty around funding, or the feeling that research planning keeps getting pushed further into the background.
Summer can provide a rare opportunity to work on those areas before the pace of the fall semester returns.
For faculty considering professional development this summer, the most useful question may simply be: Where would additional structure, strategy, or support make the biggest difference right now?
Answering that question usually makes the next step much easier to identify.