Theme: Collective Brilliance: Advancing Research, Mentorship and Leadership 📍 October 30–November 2, 2025 | Atlanta, GA We’re excited to announce that NCFDD will be attending the 2025 Institute on Teaching and Mentoring, hosted by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). The conference theme, “Collective Brilliance: Advancing Research, Mentorship and Leadership,” aligns perfectly with our commitment … Read more
Lead with clarity, confidence, and balance starting today. Stepping into the chair role can feel overwhelming. This guide from NCFDD offers proven strategies to help you lead effectively, support your faculty, and protect your own well-being. Download Your Free Guide Becoming a department chair is one of the most complex transitions in academia. You are … Read more
Author: NCFDD Ahead of the start of our new Rethinking Your Research Funding course, we’re spotlighting the experts who helped shape the curriculum. Franco Montalto, PhD, is one such contributor, bringing extensive experience working across federal, state, local, and industry-funded projects. Franco is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at … Read more
Author: NCFDD Ahead of the start of our new Rethinking Your Research Funding course, we’re spotlighting the experts who helped shape the curriculum. Sabrina Noel, PhD, RD is one such brilliant mind, who brings years of research and faculty expertise to the course. Sabrina is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health at … Read more
Author: Chavella T. Pittman, PhD, Effective & Efficient Faculty Most campus procedures for reviewing teaching for retention, tenure, and promotion run counter to best and evidence-based practices. This means that faculty must be intentional and proactive about their teaching review materials. This is especially important for diverse faculty because we often face unfair teaching threats … Read more
Author: NCFDD Ahead of the launch of our new Rethinking Your Research Funding course, we are spotlighting the experts who helped shape the curriculum. Jolie Sheffer, PhD is one of those experts, bringing deep experience as both a faculty member and an academic leader to the conversation. As Associate Dean in the College of Arts … Read more
Faculty burnout isn’t new, but it’s getting harder to ignore. Between competing demands, shifting expectations, and an ever-growing to-do list, faculty continue to be stretched more thinly than ever before. The pursuit of teaching excellence, groundbreaking research, and meaningful service often comes at the expense of personal well-being. At NCFDD, we’ve spent 15 years partnering … Read more
Faculty are navigating one of the most complex grant funding environments in recent memory. Federal priorities are shifting. Budgets are tightening. And competition for research dollars continues to rise. At the same time, institutions continue to depend on external funding, but often without updating the systems and structures that help faculty pursue it effectively. For … Read more
If you’ve served as a department chair, you know the role is unlike anything else in academia. It sits at a crossroads: part administrator, part faculty peer, part conflict resolver, part strategist. On any given day, you might be handling budget requests, onboarding a new faculty member, addressing student concerns, fielding institutional mandates, and navigating … Read more
Continuing the Conversation: NCFDD and COACHE on Rethinking Faculty Mentoring Earlier this year, NCFDD and Harvard’s Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) released a joint white paper—Redefining Mentoring in Higher Education—that challenged long-held assumptions about what effective faculty mentoring looks like. Drawing on COACHE survey data and NCFDD field-tested strategies and programs, the … Read more