Resources for New Faculty
New Faculty Tips | FAQs | New Faculty Advice
3. Selected external resources providing New Faculty advice:
3.1. 10 Things New Faculty Would Like to Hear From Colleagues (PDF)
Seasoned faculty at University of Georgia look back and list advice they wish someone had given them when they first started their careers - issues faculty face, things new faculty want, how to live the academic life etc.
3.2. Advice for New Faculty - Everything in Moderation
From Stanford University's Tomorrow's Professor list serve. Two excerpts are presented from Robert Boice's new book, Advice for New Faculty Members - Nihil Nimus, Allyn and Bacon, 2000.
The first excerpt is a listing of Boice's rules for moderation in teaching based in part on his work with "quick starters" - faculty who had excelled at teaching, research, and publishing. The second excerpt deals with a common difficulty of beginning faculty, that of saying "no" to unnecessary things that can overextend.
3.3. Tips for New Faculty
In 1996 the University of British Columbia's Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth Faculty Mentoring Program held a Tips For New Faculty contest. Submissions came from faculty members at different stages in their academic careers - from new faculty to senior administrators, and from every faculty at UBC.
The following is a compilation of the main "tips for new faculty" written and reviewed by faculty members, and covers themes like the importance of setting goals, achieving balance between work and personal life, documenting everything, taking a teaching workshop, talking to colleagues and finding a mentor.
- Faculty e-Learning Resource Guide
- Transferable Life Skills - Questions New Faculty Members should ask
- Helping New Faculty Achieve Their Potential
- Transferable Life Skills - Questions Department Heads should ask
- Faculty/Graduate Student Night
3.4. An Essay on Educational Technology in The Classroom
Robert E. Jensen, recently retired Professor in Accounting at Trinity University, Texas, writes about using technology in the classroom and the challenges faced by faculty, in the form of Q&As, journal excerpts, email discussions and article links.
This essay Are You Willing to Be Blissfully Out of Date? was written for the American Accounting Association's New Faculty Handbook. It includes examples of educational technology, questions on how will they improve performance, the differences between "popular teacher" versus "master teacher" versus "mastery learning" versus "master educator", an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal and much more.
3.5. A Common Sense Guide for New Faculty and Administrators - Information on Promotion and Tenure/Continuing Status Issues - "The Collective Wisdom"
The "Collective Wisdom" site was developed by the Office of the Dean, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Arizona as an easily-accessed, internal resource to provide practical, informal guidance and answers to frequently asked questions for college faculty navigating the process to promotion and/or the award of tenure or continuing status, as processed by the Provost's office.
3.6. FTEP Publications
The Faculty Teaching Excellence Program (FTEP) has served University of Colorado at Boulder 's faculty members since 1986. The program operates as a part of the Office of the Provost and is built on the principle that faculty learn about teaching best from one another. The role of FTEP is to understand the culture of practice centered in students as learners and learning processes.
The following selected publications are of interest to anyone involved with pedagogy, faculty evaluation, and instructional development.
- On Teaching, Vol. I (PDF): Essays include topics such as active learning strategies, the continuity of research and teaching, teaching Shakespeare, the scientist as story teller, and professional ethics.
- On Teaching, Vol. II (PDF): Essays on facilitating class discussion, gendered subjects, large lecture environments, ethics in academe, the Socratic method, epistemology, and other topics.
- On Teaching, Vol. III (PDF): Essays on such topics as science teaching, a case for a teaching portfolio, developing an inclusive curriculum, an interview with a University of Colorado at Boulder President's Teaching Scholar about teaching, and other topics.
- Getting Started: Idea Book on Pedagogy for New Faculty (PDF): The sections of this book provide valuable insights and advice on teaching for new faculty members.
- Section One has advice on topics relevant to the first year of teaching.
- Section Two contains essays by experienced teachers with practical teaching advice.
- Section Three explains the goals and methods of the FTEP.
- Compendium of Good Ideas on Teaching and Learning (PDF): This is a collection of 180 concrete teaching tips designed to be useful for any college teacher. This compendium was developed from interviews with teachers on the UC-Boulder who have been cited for excellence in the classroom and contains 113 practical teaching tips.
- On Diversity in Teaching and Learning: A Compendium (PDF): A collection of essays by UC-Boulder faculty on embracing diversity in teaching and learning. Topics include diversity in discussions, the inclusive curriculum, and stereotypes. [web site]
3.7. Just in Time Teaching Tips and Policies
This information site has been developed by the Center for Teaching and Learning Services at the University of Minnesota to provide "just in time" resources for new faculty and staff as they enter their first semester.
The site includes information on:
- Tips for preparing for your first day of class, developing a syllabus etc.
- Tips for dealing with issues that may arise during the course of a semester, such as disruptive students, grading concerns, and make-up exams.
- Tips for preparing to end your first semester, including giving final exams, assigning grades and teaching evaluations.
3.8. Mentoring New Faculty: Advice to Department Chairs
The article was published in the CSWP Gazette, 13 (1), 1 August, 1993, which is the newsletter of the Committee on the Status of Women in Physics of The American Physical Society.
This article was written by Marjorie Olmstead, Associate Professor of Physics and Adjunct Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle.
3.9. A review of Advice for New Faculty Members: Nihil Nimus
This site is a book review of the most frequently mentioned book on new faculty advising, Advice for New Faculty Members: Nihil Nimus, by Robert Boice, Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2000. 319 pp. $28.00 (paper).
The review is located on the Johns Hopkins Libraries server under their Project MUSE program, which is a collaboration between libraries and publishers providing 100% full-text and affordable online access to over 300 high quality humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from 60 scholarly publishers.
This review was last published in The Journal of Higher Education 73.1 (2002) 186-188, Ohio State University Press. Local access is provided by UF Libraries.
