Faculty Development
The Summer Teaching Workshop is a unique annual professional development opportunity for faculty of ACS member institutions at all career stages. It is a challenging and invigorating experience for faculty wanting to strengthen teaching performance, expand teaching techniques and explore pedagogical issues.
Read more about the Workshop.
ACS FOCUS (Faculty of Color Uniting for Success)–addresses the challenges that faculty of color face in their path to professional success in the academy. responsibilities for mentoring students and service. This project consists of a two-pronged approach to improving the recruitment, retention, and success of faculty of color at ACS institutions. First, ACS FOCUS provides a summer institute for faculty of color. The institute addressed scholarly productivity through specific goal setting, designated time for scholarship each day, and follow-ups on progress made. The project also brings in trained facilitators to assist faculty with topics such as self-care, cultivating mentors, navigating tenure and promotion, and managing service demands. Along the way, it aims to explicitly build a peer mentoring network by facilitating cross-institutional relationships. Second, the project seeks to raise awareness and support for the challenges that faculty of color face within ACS consortia schools through educating our institutions.
Department chairs are essential faculty leadership roles that influence and shape the institutional mission and student success. This year-long program will leverage a consortial approach to professional development and build community among participants while providing essential guidance, opportunities for self-reflection, and sharing of useful practices for effective leadership as a department chair.
ACS regularly issues calls for proposals to tackle key topics through collaborative research, working groups and the creation and presentation of workshops. The emphasis is on forming groups across member colleges along academic subject or leadership function expertise. A key example is the work in the summer of 2020 to create and produce workshops and teaching resources on the topic of teaching pedagogies during the pandemic. Links to the outcomes of these groups are provided on our Teaching and Leadership Resource page.
Calls for proposals are announced on the ACS home page, sent to members for distribution and provided in our Membership Community area.
Leadership Development
A key part of the mission for the Associated Colleges of the South is development of higher education leaders at all levels of the university. Some of our on-going initiatives are identified here.
ACS Mellon Academic Leadership Fellows