ELEVATING YOUR PERSPECTIVE

month, our newsletter is dedicated to expanding our reach. To that end, you'll meet the winners of the RWJF New Connections scholarships in our Faculty Success Program spotlight, we welcome our newest institutional member (the University of California, Berkeley), and you'll learn about our exciting new facilitated learning community: How to Develop, Write and Submit Your Article in Nine Weeks. You'll also learn about a new guest expert workshop entitled Teaching in Color: Effective Teaching Strategies for Faculty of Color. And because our center's fastest growing demographic is mid-career scholars, our feature article is dedicated to Mapping The Mid-Career Emotional Spectrum.

I hope there's something in our September Newsletter that will inspire you to elevate YOUR perspective, try something new, and imagine how you can bridge the gap between where you're starting off this semester and where you want to land in December!

Warmly,

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD
President, National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity

FACULTY SUCCESS PROGRAM SPOTLIGHT

Meet The New Connections Program Scholarship Winners!

The Robert Woods Johnson Foundation New Connections Program sponsored four scholarships for the Fall 2012 Faculty Success Program. The scholarship winners are:

	Alyssa Garcia, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Women’s Studies, Pennsylvania State University
	Glenda Morris Burnett, PhD Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, St. Xavier University, Chicago, Illinois
	Madeline Pérez, PhD Assistant Professor College of Social Work and Latino Community Practice University of Saint Joseph
	Nicole Lewis, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Hawaii

INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

DID YOU MISS THE

NCFDD INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERSHIP PREVIEW CALL?

Many college and university leaders want to diversify their faculties and invest heavily in recruitment as the primary mechanism to meet that goal. However, under-represented faculty often experience a lack of community, support, and mentoring on campus. This call outlines how administrators can provide external mentoring, targeted professional development training, and a peer support network for under-represented faculty.

 CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE SLIDES AND AUDIO

UPCOMING TRAINING WORKSHOPS

NEW FOR AY 2012-2013: FACILITATED LEARNING COMMUNITIES

In response to our member's requests, individual and institutional members will now include access to our brand new facilitated learning communities (no registration fees, no extra tuition - it's all included in your annual membership). These are multi-week courses, given by subject matter experts, on the topics of greatest need: 1) how to write a journal article, 2) how to write a grant, 3) how to win fellowships in the humanities, and 4) how to become an academic entrepreneur.

The first course, How to Develop, Write and Submit Your Article in Nine Weeks, will begin on September 26th.

Facilitated Learning Community: How to Develop, Write and Submit Your Article in Nine Weeks Facilitator: Rich Furman, PhD Dates: 9/26/2012 - 11/28/2012 Registration Deadline: 9/15/2012 Register Today!

In this 9-week facilitated learning community you will learn the ins and outs of publishing scholarly articles. Through audio lessons, readings, experiential exercises, and threaded discussions, you will develop the skills you need to publish your work. Participants work on a new or in-progress article, receiving invaluable feedback from other workshop participants. This course is ideal for those fairly new to scholarly publishing, or for those who may be stuck, and wish to develop and strengthen existing skills.

FEATURE ARTICLE

1) Exhausted:

Post-tenure faculty members often describe feeling physically, emotionally and relationally bone-weary. They have been stretched so thin by service and institutional maintenance that their work-life feels like a constant sprint from one mind-numbing meeting to another.

2) Confused:

Choosing a path for the next chapter of your career can elicit feelings of confusion about what to put on the front burner and what to leave on the back burner. This confusion can stem from a sense of wanting to do lots of different things or it can stem from a lack of interest in much of anything.

3) Disappointed:

I often hear people describe moments of looking around and thinking, "Is this it?" Having worked so hard to win tenure, some faculty experience intense disappointment when faced with the reality that they are now committed to colleagues they find unstimulating, living in a geographic location that is suboptimal, and/or feeling they have few meaningful relationships outside of work because of how much they have sacrificed to win tenure.

4) Numb:

On the tenure track, many faculty mask their emotions so as to be professional and to be sure they don’t make enemies among those who will be voting on their case. However, masking one’s emotions over a period of time and stuffing down intense emotional responses can result in feeling numb, perpetually flat affect, and an inability to connect to emotions.

5) Trapped:

This feeling comes from the market reality that it’s harder to move from one institution to another post-tenure than it is pre-tenure. Even beyond the academic labor market, some faculty describe themselves as feeling "trapped” when they are no longer interested in research but don’t believe they have any marketable skills outside of the academy. In this context, the perception of a limited marketability combined with the security of a guaranteed salary and benefits for the duration of their professional career binds some faculty to a space and position they feel unable to leave.

6) Mad:

During the tenure-track years, some faculty members endure a variety of hazing-like experiences. For those who have been beaten down over a period of six years, some issues and incidents remain unresolved or unexpressed and result in a constant simmering rage that is carried around on a daily basis and can erupt with the slightest provocation. For others, anger stems from structural pressures like budget cuts that result in constantly increasing workloads and fewer resources. Anger can also be related to devaluation. It’s only after being promoted with tenure that some professors realize the disconnect between their own personal values and the values of their college or university. Because post-tenure faculty members engage in different types of service, they are often brought into close contact with the stark distinction between the story of what is valued by their institution and the reality of what is valued (evidenced by resource distribution). When faculty members sense that work in a particular area is neither rewarded, nor recognized as valuable by the institution, a certain level of inertia and disengagement can set in.

7) Unmotivated:

During the pre-tenure years, fear of failure (not getting promoted with tenure) is a powerful motivator. For some faculty members, once the absence of fear, as well as intense, time-limited pressures to perform are gone, their motivation is significantly diminished and a new source of motivation must be located.

8) Bored:

This feeling is primarily voiced around teaching and repetitive service responsibilities. For example, teaching introductory-level courses may be stimulating the first few times, but the 30th time around feels significantly less so.

9) Relieved:

Winning tenure is an enormous accomplishment and one that has taken six years of hard work. The sense of relief stems from an alleviation of the pressures generated by the tenure track (not knowing if you can put down roots in a location, not knowing if you will be successful, etc.). This emotion is frequently asserted by those who have recently been awarded tenure and promotion and often short-lived.

10) Free:

This particular emotion can take a few different forms. One is from a sense of intellectual freedom where scholars who may have taken a strategic approach to their work in the pre-tenure years feel the freedom to engage in more ambitious projects post-tenure. Additionally, some mid-career faculty members describe feeling free in terms of their voice and feeling that they no longer need to filter or modulate their opinions (as they did when they were on probation). And finally, some describe a deep sense of freedom based on not having to worry about their financial and professional future in ways that will allow them to focus entirely on their scholarship and teaching.

11) Happy:

This emotion is experienced by people who feel they are doing exactly what they want to do and who have organized their post-tenure life to maximize the time they spend on activities that energize them and minimize the activities that are energy draining.

12) Powerful:

I hear this from faculty who describe knowing how to work the systems, opportunities, and networks on their campus to get things done. They feel clear in their agenda, know how to move it forward, feel comfortable saying no, and skilled in blocking competing agendas from advancing.

What’s interesting is that the majority of positions on the mid-career emotional spectrum are negative and debilitating. If you locate yourself in any of these negative states, I want to suggest a few ideas to free yourself up in order to move forward.

This month I encourage you to:

1. Locate yourself on the mid-career emotional spectrum.

2. Ask yourself whether your current location on that spectrum is likely to move you forward on your mid-career path or if it’s keeping you stuck where you are.

3. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and ask yourself: What would it take for me to release myself from this emotion and move forward?

4. Try some form of emotional release to move whatever negative energy that you’re carrying in your body out of you and make the space for some healing. This will be most effective if you try something you’ve never done before.

5. Take 15 minutes to journal about what it means to you to live a successful life. If your version of success is perfectly aligned with your institution, great! If it’s not, take some additional time to consider what it means to thrive in a context where your values differ from institutional values and what type of support would be necessary to support you.