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| Faculty Newsletter | April 2022 |
Dear faculty,
Mentoring is an important component of the culture of excellence at Northwestern—whether it's senior faculty mentoring junior faculty or faculty mentoring students. Effective mentoring enables mentees to better navigate their career advancement, intellectual and creative growth, and professional and personal well-being. Mentors provide valuable service by creating a supportive community for the next generation of scholars.
To better position our faculty for productive mentorship relationships, we created a Provost’s Office Mentoring Council populated by faculty from across the schools. This group developed four core Foundational Principles of Mentoring Practice. These principles have been posted on a new Mentoring Excellence section of the Office of the Provost's website. There, you'll find the principles, best practices and resources that assist all faculty serving in formal or informal mentorship roles—particularly in the areas of well-being, diversity, equity and inclusion. I encourage you to take some time to review these resources in the context of your own current or future mentorship relationships.
As you may know, the Office of the Provost facilitates two cross-school mentoring programs: the Chairs Mentoring Program and the Faculty Small Group Mentoring Program for new and early career faculty. The Graduate School offers resources for mentoring graduate students, and many schools and departments also have their own models for faculty mentoring activities and assessment. My office looks forward to working with schools and department leaders to find ways to incorporate the Foundational Principles of Mentoring Practice into all formal mentoring programs.
We will continue to build our mentorship resources in the coming months and years. As always, we welcome your feedback on how the Office of the Provost can further support career development through these and other resources.
Thank you,
Sumit Dhar |
News and notes |
Portable Caregiving Grants
Human Resources has launched a Portable Caregiving Grant that is intended to help mitigate financial and accessibility burdens for caregivers. The program, which provides single-payment, taxable grants of up to $1,500, complements Northwestern’s center-based fee assistance program and may be used for care at centers outside center partnerships as well as for home day cares and in-home care.
Inclusive Teaching Practicum
During Fall 2021, more than 200 faculty, staff and graduate students participated in the three-week cohort-based Inclusive Teaching Practicum. This program is designed for instructors of all levels, backgrounds and teaching contexts to deepen their understanding of how their identities, positionality and practices (as well as those of their students) impact course climate and student learning, and to reflect on how they may interrogate and de-center dominant perspectives and content. The final iteration of this program will take place April 11-29. Registration will close April 6. For questions, email inclusiveteaching@northwestern.edu.
Office of the Provost website redesign
After many months of research and preparation in partnership with the Office of Global Marketing and Communications, the Office of the Provost launched a redesigned website in late February that provides a fresher and more dynamic reflection of office's work. The site now includes an events calendar, news and announcements, more prominent space for DEI initiatives on the homepage and much more. The website will continue to be updated over the coming months to reflect the resources provided by the Office of the Provost. Feedback is welcome by emailing officeoftheprovost@northwestern.edu.
Faculty Wellness Week winner
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Ágnes Horvát won an annual membership to the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion for her participation in Faculty Wellness Week. All faculty participants in Northwestern’s first Faculty Wellness Week that took place in February were eligible for the drawing. The weeklong event helped many faculty members get back into the habit of exercise. During the 2022-2023 academic year, Faculty Wellness Week will take place Oct. 3-9, 2022, and Jan. 23-29, 2023.
In case you missed it
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Faculty support and resources |
Pandemic response resources
Provost Kathleen Hagerty hosted a faculty webinar on March 10 that focused on Northwestern’s response to the long-term effects the pandemic has had on the personal and professional lives of faculty members. The recording, presentation slides and links to resources are posted on the Pandemic Impact Response webpage. The next faculty webinar will take place May 16.
Gabrielle Foreman events
Internationally renowned Black history, literature and digital humanities scholar Gabrielle Foreman will participate in a series of campus events May 2 to 6, including May 5 and May 6 mentoring workshops for faculty. Foreman is professor of English, African American studies and history at Penn State University, where she holds the Joseph Paterno Family Chair in Liberal Arts. She is the founding director of the Colored Conventions Project (CCP) website, which preserves the records of seven decades of early Black convention organizing and features interactive historical exhibits, documenting what was then called the Colored Convention movement. Northwestern’s public events on May 2 and May 4 will showcase Foreman’s interdisciplinary expertise in Black history, art, poetry and digital humanities and her accomplishments at bringing Black history to communities through on-line exhibits and collaborations in the arts.
Summer Writing Retreat
For some faculty members, navigating the pandemic has meant less time has been available for writing and revising articles, book manuscripts and grant proposals. To help address this challenge, Northwestern offers a weeklong, on-campus Summer Writing Retreat from July 25-29 that will provide uninterrupted time and space for faculty to write. The deadline to apply is April 8. |
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