Academics

UMass ADVANCE Announces Spring Faculty Development Workshops

UMass ADVANCE is pleased to announce a spring lineup of faculty and leader development workshops focused on faculty collaboration and equity.

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Faculty Mentoring Practices and Plans (National Webinar)

Feb. 16, 4 to 5 p.m., Zoom

With Joya Misra and James Allan, UMass Amherst

Mentoring faculty colleagues effectively is key to ensuring retention, a good departmental climate, and faculty success. This interactive webinar identifies effective strategies for mentoring colleagues including establishing effective communication, building networks and collegial relationships, working through issues of equity and inclusion and promoting work-life balance. This session covers UMass ADVANCE tools and templates for faculty mentoring plans, mentoring strategies, and inclusive departmental practices.

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Equity Minded Workload Reform, Part 2 - Policies

Feb. 24, 10:00 a.m. to noon, Zoom

With Joya Misra, UMass Amherst

Many faculty members report feeling that workload in their department is unfairly distributed; women and faculty of color may be asked to carry out more than their share of work. This session provides clear, evidence-based practices to create better, fairer workloads for faculty through changing the “choice architecture” for the division of labor in departments. We discuss a variety of approaches to workload equity such as rotating time-intensive roles, reducing and restructuring committees, creating policies for service and teaching assignments, using benchmarks by rank, or developing crediting systems that can help departments create fairer workload for all faculty. This session follows a session in November (Part 1) and focuses on organizational policies and practices that can be adopted to proactively design more equitable workloads and reward systems.

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LGBTQ+ Faculty in STEM: Policies to Support Success and Inclusion

March 7, 4 to 5:30 p.m., Zoom

With Ramón Barthelemy, University of Utah

Queer civil rights in the USA have been hard won from direct activism and organization of a diverse coalition of people, including trans women and men, People of Color, and members of the LGBT+ community more broadly. This talk will explore this history and take an in-depth look at the literature on LGBT+ students, faculty, and people in STEM spaces. Through this conversation central themes from this work will emerge, including the challenges of heteronormativity, exclusionary behavior, and harassment. The talk will end with a discussion of possible policy solutions and approaches to support the success of LGBT+ peoples in STEM.

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Launching New Research Projects and Teams (Within or Across Disciplines)

March 21, 2 to 3:30 p.m., W. E. B. DuBois Library, Room 2601

Hosted by the Office of Faculty Development in collaboration with the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement, the Institute for Social Science Research and UMass ADVANCE.

Are you launching a new research project or rebooting an existing one? Whether it’s your first time leading a project or you are scaling up an existing one, this panel of faculty from across campus will offer valuable tips and share their experiences on managing projects and inspiring teams. Facilitated by Laura Vandenberg, associate vice chancellor for research and engagement and professor of environmental health sciences, the goal of panel discussion is to help you preemptively navigate potential obstacles building your project and team (within or across disciplines, in person or online), answer questions you have, and connect you with fellow colleagues and campus resources that can support your endeavor. Coffee and pastries will be served.

Facilitator: Laura Vandenberg, associate vice chancellor for research and engagement and professor of environmental health sciences

Panelists:

Nilanjana Buju Dasgupta, provost, professor of psychological and brain sciences, director, Institute of Diversity Sciences

Laura Doyle, professor of English and Chancellor’s Leadership Fellow working on supporting and developing interdisciplinarity at UMass

Shannon Roberts, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering

Kevin Young, associate professor, department of economics

The panel will be followed by the launch of incubators for faculty interested in creating mutual mentoring groups on research-related themes (e.g., pre-award; post-award; budgets; hiring; collaboration; student mentoring; public engagement).

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ADVANCE Annual Distinguished Lecture – “Work in Black and White in the Knowledge Economy”

March 28, 4 p.m., Great Hall in Old Chapel

With Enobong (Anna) Branch, professor of sociology, and senior vice president for equity at Rutgers University. Formerly, Anna was the first associate chancellor for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at UMass Amherst.

More Information Coming Soon.

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Equitable Collaboration Practices (National Webinar)

April 4, 4 to 5 p.m., Zoom

With Ethel Mickey, California State University, San Bernardino, Jennifer Normanly, UMass ADVANCE, and Laurel Smith-Doerr, UMass ADVANCE

Research collaboration is essential in the conduct of science, but many collaborations reflect inequitable practices that undermine the success of the project. In this interactive webinar, we describe how to build collaborations that are transparent, equitable and allow for creative growth through clear communication and respect for all contributions. This session covers UMass ADVANCE tools and checklists for approaches to creating and crediting equitable research collaboration.

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Equitable Collaboration Practices (for Heads and Chairs with LEAD+)

April 28, 12:30 to 2 p.m., Zoom

With Jennifer Normanly and Laurel Smith-Doerr, UMass ADVANCE

This session is open to heads/chairs and associate deans.

Please email ofd@umass.edu to register.

This workshop is presented in partnership with the Office of Faculty Development's LEAD+ Program.

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Departmental Mentoring Plans

May 5, 12:30 to 2 p.m., Zoom

With Joya Misra, UMass ADVANCE and Angela de Oliveira, Office of Faculty Development

This workshop is aimed at faculty members and chairs/heads developing or revising departmental mentoring plans. The session will begin with a short presentation of principles to keep in mind in developing mentoring plans, as well as some example departmental mentoring plans. Much of the session will be devoted to workshopping elements of the mentoring plan, so that attendees leave the 90-minute workshop with a draft or revised mentoring plan that you can share with colleagues. We will answer the following questions: What are the best practices in departmental mentoring that lead to retaining faculty and creating positive departmental cultures? How do departmental mentoring plans differ from individualized mentoring plans? What are some concrete strategies that large, medium-sized, and small departments can draw upon in developing departmental mentoring plans?

This workshop is presented in collaboration with the Office of Faculty Development.