Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs Report: Three and a Half Years of the VPFA (2019 – 2023)

1. Faculty are lifelong learners. Our office should support faculty development, career advancement, and pedagogical growth across the faculty lifecycle and in each faculty series. As faculty develop and grow in their careers, their needs and interests change. We are committed to developing tailored and intentional programming to support faculty across stages that draws on existing data and scholarly literature.

   How can we build on research-informed practice, adapt best practices from other universities, and scale successful models from within DU academic units, departments, and programs?

2. Faculty-driven solutions promote faculty thriving. Institutional change should be led by faculty, providing authentic opportunities for agency. Faculty know best the pain points and challenges they face as individuals, and within their identity and affinity groups. Faculty are significantly impacted by day-to-day work climate, and often make decisions about staying or leaving based on the culture of their home departments or programs; therefore, initiating and scaling culture change at the department and programmatic levels has the greatest and most immediate impact.

   What national models exist for implementing faculty-led and department-level culture change?

3. Change matters most when it can be scaled and sustained. Meaningful and research-based change occurs within an ecosystem and is best approached from a systems perspective—with choreographed attention at the micro, meso, and macro levels.

   How do we create a scalable and sustainable ecosystem for faculty thriving? Within this ecosystem, how do we attend to thriving at the micro, meso, and macro levels, while rewarding and incentivizing necessary work?

4. Equity is achieved through equitable policies, processes, and practices. Only with clear, consistent, and collectively decided guardrails to guide decision-making can we ensure that our rhetoric aligns with our reality.

   Do policies, processes, and practices align across the university, and in units and departments/programs? Where could alignment be improved? How do we address equity issues and ensure that all faculty work is visible and valued?

5. The quality of our processes is essential to equity, authenticity, belonging, and trust. Trust and ethical deliberation are especially important in high-stakes decisions such as curriculum change; policy and bylaw creation and revision; and hiring, promotion, and reappointment. High-functioning groups implement structures to guide these decisions, such as discussing criteria before deliberation, designing interactional norms and practices that mitigate informal power dynamics, and attending to facilitation, process monitoring, and feedback.

   Have we created inclusive decision-making processes that ensure consistency, clarity, transparency, and equitable actions regardless of who is making the decision?

6. Shared governance and cross-functional teams of faculty, administrators, and staff are essential to finding solutions in the academic enterprise. Thoughtful partnerships between Faculty Senate, academic leaders (e.g., associate deans, chairs, directors), and university committees are essential for connection, coordination, and collaboration. Such collaborations ensure that equitable policies are developed through iterative and consultative processes that achieve outcomes and avoid harmful unintended consequences.

   How can we align multi-year initiatives and committee work that allows for consistent stakeholder engagement, organizational learning, piloting within the DU context, and sequential shared-governance deliberation and successful implementation within a reasonable period of time?

7. Connections, relationality, and collegiality create and sustain an academic community and a sense of belonging at DU. Opportunities for connection and collaboration among colleagues help mitigate the academic, neoliberal, and competitive norms that inhibit inclusive or equitable climates. Working together needs to be part of our collective muscle memory sustained by rituals, practices, and rhythms that require cultivation and sustenance.

   How do we create networks of colleagues as basins of attraction that bring us to campus for collective gatherings? How do we create a culture where we participate generously in mentoring and support of colleagues?

8. Transparent, data-driven decision-making is essential for responsive programming, policies, processes, and practices. VPFA and OTL programming should be informed by data on faculty satisfaction and consistent faculty engagement across campus. This requires consistent surveying with validated research designs, paired with data sharing and data-informed change. Faculty need to be part of data governance to make sure data is clean, accurate, and equity minded. Collecting data comes with an obligation to share it with campus communities and implement change in response to what we learn.

   How do we build a culture of trust and transparency in faculty surveys and data, and a concomitant responsiveness by leaders to addressing identified growth areas? How can consistent stakeholder engagement be designed into programming and initiatives, so that our office and programming is also informed by these dialogic encounters?

9. A culture of care and appreciation supports colleagues and portends more success. Responsive systems that promote a culture of care and support among colleagues are essential to creating a welcoming and affirming climate. Much faculty work relies on deferred gratification; thus, finding and ritualizing opportunities to celebrate milestones matters a great deal.

   How do we design responsive networks of care and meaningful events that celebrate and reflect diverse forms of accomplishment and recognition?

10. Good communication supports inclusion. Newsletters from the VPFA and OTL, and responsive and timely web content allow faculty to be informed and learn about opportunities, initiatives, and goings-on around campus. Highlighting faculty voices and perspectives invites broader participation and sharing.

    How do we boost the signal on opportunities, policies, processes, best practices, and initiatives, and celebrate our colleagues’ success across campus in a way that penetrates the faculty email deluge?

These core ideas have driven our work for the last three and a half years and shaped the vision of the VPFA position. The following report highlights but a few examples of
the impact and implementation of this critical work.

Best,