Promoting Academic Excellence: USU Joins National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity

In a continuing effort to promote academic excellence and a sense of belonging among its scholars, Utah State University has joined the 450-member-strong National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity.

The Detroit-based institute provides professional development, training and mentoring for faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students with the goals of enhancing productivity and work-life balance through communities of support and accountability.

“This is an exciting development for Utah State as we build on efforts initiated several years ago through the university’s affiliation with the National Science Foundation-funded Aspire Alliance,” says USU College of Science Dean Michelle Baker, who spearheaded the university’s NCFDD participation.

Baker says USU’s NCFDD membership, effective Aug. 1, enables Aggie faculty, postdocs and grad students to gain access to an external mentoring community designed to support the academic enterprise. Faculty, postdocs and graduate students are encouraged to register individually, under USU’s institutional membership, for NCFDD services and development opportunities at facultydiversity.org.

“Institutional membership in NCFDD speaks of USU’s commitment to inclusive excellence; offering additional resources that will provide our administrators, faculty and graduate students opportunities to engage with and learn from others across the country,” says Jane Irungu, USU Vice President for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. “Building professional communities of support such as what NCFDD provides is among one of the best strategies for retention and success in the academy.”

The Aspire Alliance, led by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and also known as “Aspire: The National Alliance for Inclusive and Diverse STEM Faculty,” seeks to develop inclusive faculty recruitment, hiring and retention practices among its member institutions.

As part of USU’s participation in the alliance, Baker led the effort to establish the College of Science’s JEDI-STEM (Justice, Diversity and Inclusion in STEM Collaboratory (“collaborative laboratory”). The collaboratory, with support from the college’s academic departments and the Provost’s Office, secured a cluster-hire of five tenure-track faculty positions. Individuals hired for these positions are committed to work together to advocate for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion across academic disciplines.

From the college’s collaboratory faculty members and from her participation in a 2022 summer institute coordinated by the NSF Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) program, Baker learned about the NCFDD.

“NCFDD offers an online core curriculum of skills development, along with webinars, writing challenges, courses, workshops, a podcast, as well as an annual Faculty Success Program,” says Baker, the 2023 recipient of USU’s Diversity Award – Administrator Category. “This is a great opportunity for Utah State, and we hope our university community will take advantage of these resources.”

Initiated in 2012, NCFDD is an independent community of academic professionals from more than 450 colleges and universities throughout the United States.