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The Office of Faculty Development (OFD) has announced that three faculty members have been named winners of the 2025-26 UMass Amherst Delphi Leadership Award.

Laura Francis, senior lecturer in the Department of Biology, Christine Hatch, extension professor in the Department of  Earth, Geographic and Climate Sciences, and Michelle Trim senior lecturer II in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS), have been selected for their innovative contributions and exceptional leadership in support of their non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty peers at the university.

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Francis has been recognized for her leadership with shared governance, the BioLearn and ADVANCE mutual mentoring groups, and the College of Natural Sciences (CNS) Lecturer Promotion Review Committee. She chairs the Course Subcommittee of the Academic Matters Council in the Faculty Senate and is a member of the Massachusetts Society of Professors Executive Board. In the Department of Biology, she advocated for increasing the representation of NTT faculty on the departmental personnel committee and co-founded the BioLearn mutual mentoring group. She further serves as chair for the Undergraduate Experience Committee. In CNS, she served as chair for the Workplace Climate Committee and as both member and chair on the Lecturer Promotion Review committee, where she worked across the college and units to help develop clear guidance and align expectations for promotion reviews.

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Hatch has been recognized for her leadership with the Extension Faculty Bargaining Committee for the Massachusetts Society of Professors, ADVANCE, and mentoring of Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (CAFE) NTT faculty. The Extension Faculty Bargaining Committee’s work clarified evaluation and promotion procedures and resulted in access to the Professional Development Fellowships, Public Engagement Program Fellows, ADVANCE Faculty Fellows, and eligibility for emeritus status. With ADVANCE, she has worked to help create guidance on equity for continuing stream faculty.

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Trim has been recognized for her leadership in shared governance and advocacy within CICS. In the Faculty Senate, she has served as chair of the University Writing Committee, chair of the Faculty Senate Ad-hoc Committee on Revising the Diversity General Education Requirement, co-chair of the Joint Task Force on Generative AI, the first NTT faculty member to chair the Rules Committee. She further served the campus as a Chancellor’s Leadership Fellow. Within CICS, she successfully designed and proposed the hiring of three new lecturer positions to support writing in computer science. She is the first NTT faculty member to serve as a Faculty Delegate to the Board of Trustees.

The selection committee for the 2025-26 award included Angela de Oliveira, associate provost for faculty development, Christiane Healey, senior lecturer II of biology, and Marc Liberatore, senior teaching faculty in CICS.

“We are proud to recognize the tremendous leadership and dedication of each of these three faculty members to improve our campus for their colleagues,” de Oliveira says. “Each of these recipients has demonstrated a remarkable commitment to inclusivity, equity, and support for NTT faculty and I, along with my other selection committee members, are thrilled to honor their work through this award.”

Each of the award winners will receive an honorary plaque and a $1,500 award.

More information about the UMass Amherst Delphi Leadership Award can be found on the OFD website.