Enhanced faculty support is essential if we are to meet the ambitious goals and new academic initiatives described in this Strategic Plan. Indeed, the innovative ideas discussed here can be realized and sustained only if we simultaneously put in place a robust set of initiatives for faculty development. As noted in the preamble to our portrayal of curricular constellations, the lifeblood of Haverford’s curriculum is a mode of learning in which faculty and students equally take responsibility for interrogating received understanding and producing new knowledge. The faculty’s ability to conduct original, meaningful research underwrites the exciting pedagogy of discovery that fuels that intimate, collaborative educational mission. And that ability requires time and resources, well-placed investments in the College’s aspiration to offer a singular liberal arts experience to an outstanding student body.
Those ends can be met through the following initiatives for faculty support and development like the following:
- Encourage growth, momentum, and new directions in scholarship and teaching:
- Expand the resources to support innovative scholarship, including support for both current and new directions in faculty research agenda
- Create Term Chairs for Associate and Full Professors in order to sustain faculty productivity post-tenure
- Extend availability of the Teaching and Learning Institute to foster career-long innovation and collaboration in teaching
- Institute a 5/1 sabbatical system, providing more continuous time for research projects while adding stability to faculty governance structures and student mentoring
- Free up faculty time currently devoted to administrative tasks:
- Compensate Chairs for their distinctive administrative and leadership obligations
- Provide qualified administrative help and specialist technical collaborators (per recommendations made above)
- Renew technological infrastructure (per recommendations made in the Technology section of this Plan, see 5.D.)
- Provide support for a variety of faculty work/life issues:
- Explore new resources to help Faculty and Staff with dependent and elder care.
- Identify and implement best practices with respect to Dual Career Partner Issues
- Develop new options and ideas for pre-retirement transition from full-time work at the College
- Develop new options for post-retirement service to the College