Institutional Success

Building Strong Peer Communities: A Resource for Leadership and Advancement

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building peer communities

Author: Chrystal Bruce, PhD, Associate Dean, John Carroll University The NSF ADVANCE Partnership Project, Advancing STEM Careers by Empowering Network Development (ASCEND), was conceived to support the professional advancement of mid-career women STEM faculty and administrators. Through this collaboration, we created regional peer-to-peer networks and provided participant-informed education, training, and professional support to equip faculty … Read more

Rethinking Your Research Funding: A Conversation with Franco Montalto, PhD

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rethinking your research funding course franco montalto

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

Rethinking Your Research Funding: A Conversation with Sabrina Noel, PhD, RD

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research funding subject matter expert sabrina noel

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

Rethinking Your Research Funding: A New Course for Today’s Faculty

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research funding course

Author: NCFDD Federal funding has long been the gold standard for research support, but today’s realities tell a different story. Award rates are shrinking, political climates are shifting, and many scholars are left scrambling to keep their work afloat. Faculty who once relied on NIH or NSF grants alone are now asking: what other options … Read more

Flawed by Design: The Problem with Teaching Reviews for Tenure (and What to Do About It)

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flawed tenure process

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

Embracing Innovation in Academia: How Faculty Can Leverage AI Without Losing Their Voice

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AI in academia

Author: NCFDD Artificial intelligence is reshaping higher education. Tools that can generate text, summarize sources, or analyze data are now freely available to anyone with an internet connection. For faculty, this shift brings both opportunity and uncertainty. Will AI accelerate research or diminish originality? Will it enrich teaching or undermine student learning? The answer depends … Read more

Is It Time to Rethink Faculty Grant Support?

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rethinking faculty grant funding

Author: NCFDD 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 … Read more

The Hidden Costs of Grant Writing (And How Faculty Can Overcome Them)

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overcome grant writing challenges

Author: NCFDD Securing external funding is often seen as a key marker of academic success. It supports research agendas, opens doors for collaboration, and plays a major role in tenure and promotion decisions. But what’s less talked about is how much time, energy, and emotional bandwidth it takes to get there. For many faculty—especially those … Read more

Redefining Department Leadership Through Faculty Development

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department chair faculty development

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

What Institutions Can Do Differently with Faculty Mentoring

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faculty mentoring

Faculty mentoring is widely acknowledged as essential to academic success. It supports research productivity, retention, and career advancement, etc. However, many faculty report receiving ineffective mentoring,  Why? Because good intentions alone don’t build sustainable mentoring systems. This conversation was at the heart of Rethinking Faculty Mentoring: What Institutions Can Do Differently, a recent webinar co-hosted … Read more