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The purpose of this study was to determine not-yet-tenured university library faculty members’ views of 27 methods their department chair may use to support and enhance the faculty member's professional development. The methods were derived from earlier qualitative research on department chairs in higher education. While academic teaching department chair roles have been the subject of the research literature for many years, little research has addressed library faculty perceptions of the department chair's role. The survey instrument used consisted of two parts: (1) a demographics section, consisting of five questions; and (2) a researcher-developed survey of faculty perceptions of the department chairs’ role in faculty development. Survey participants were asked to rate the importance of methods chairs may use in enhancing the professional activities of faculty. According to the not-yet-tenured library faculty members responding to this study, a chair engaging in the most important practices to enhance their faculty's professional development would be one who utilizes good communication, while acting as an administrative advocate.

The shift in undergraduate student demographic composition, particularly for the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, has been coupled with an ever increasing need for faculty to be more culturally aware and responsive. Traditionally, higher education has relied on the professional development programs of disciplinary societies and associations to meet such needs. However, designing professional development for STEM faculty in ways that awaken awarenesses about racial differences and their impact on academic success requires more than the conventional faculty development offerings, which, more often than not, only give cursory nods to difference or limit programming to “cookbook” protocols of do's and don'ts. Indeed, today's STEM faculty professional development must be met with more sophisticated paradigms that foreground personal reflection and development. Safe brave spaces represent an ideal mechanism for supporting not only personal reflection but also the grappling with and letting go of the destructive values and beliefs that negatively impact undergraduate STEM student success. The chapter offers the reader a view into our perspective as conveners of safe brave professional development spaces. In it, we also share the words of a safe brave space occupier, demonstrating how the power of reflection can influence the value of safe brave spaces. As a result, the reader is left with a different lens through which STEM faculty professional development programs can and should be considered – whether it is who is in them, who is missing from them, or what is required to facilitate more productive interactions within them. Admittedly, there is more work yet to be done. Understanding that this work requires safety and bravery is a necessary next step.

In an environment of constrained resources and related quality assurance efforts, a growing number of American institutions are tapping collaborative relationships to develop creative ways to advance institutional outcomes. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education (SEPCHE), a non-profit organization incorporated in 1993, is a collaborative of eight private colleges and universities located in the Greater Philadelphia region. SEPCHE’s institutions are small to mid-sized colleges and universities, and like other institutions of higher education, they are increasingly challenged by several environmental factors including diminished growth in enrollment; reduced family financial capacity; limitations in availability and types of funding; and greater demand for accountability.

This chapter highlights the challenges faced by faculty to ensure that students are learning at the highest levels while balancing teaching, research and institutional responsibilities, and the role that collaborative professional development can play in helping faculty attend to these challenges. Several examples illustrate how faculty-led professional development efforts have expanded professional and research capacity efforts across institutions.

The chapter includes faculty perspectives on what has helped and hindered adoption of these efforts within and across institutions. It assesses institutional conditions and supports for sustained collaborations. These efforts are part of an initiative examining faculty work and student learning in the 21st century funded by the Teagle Foundation.

Faculty study groups offer one means for encouraging teachers to lead other teachers. As a popular staff-development delivery model, faculty study groups can promote school success while encouraging a climate of teaching and learning leadership to be fostered. At issue, however, are issues of choice and empowerment with respect to teachers’ readiness to embrace imposed initiatives. This site-based investigation reports teachers’ perceptions of the benefits and disadvantages of the mandated study-group process. Mixed results with respect to compulsory professional development are described in the areas of growth and collegiality, student achievement, emotional support, time restraints, and personality conflicts.

Strengthening the nation’s technological workforce, competing and expanding its relevance in the global economy, and maintaining personal as well as homeland security will be highly dependent on the quantity, quality, and diversity of the next generations of scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians. Production of a diverse generation of human resources with relevant, competitive skills is critical. However, so too is the need to raise an enlightened citizenry with cross-cultural experience and cultural awareness competency, with a broad worldview and global perspectives. These requirements are critical to understanding the challenges and opportunities of scholarly activity in a pluralistic global environment and positioning ourselves to capitalize upon them. Scholars with cross-cultural experience and competency are empowered to adapt and work collaboratively, nationally and globally, with scholars of different races, geopolitical, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds. Development of effective strategies to transform science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments for inclusion and to broaden the participation in STEM across cultures, socioeconomic standing, race, and gender in higher education has been a dominant topic of pedagogical interest of national priority in the last several decades. However, success in these endeavors is achievable only through systemic change and a cultural shift to address the underlying root causes of socioeconomic disparity, gender, and racial disparities and a paucity of cultural awareness among all educational stakeholders. STEM departments can only be truly transformed for inclusion through the development of sensitive, creative, and student-engaging curricula and targeted recruitment and retention of underrepresented minorities in STEM. Formation of well-coordinated alliances spanning educational sectors, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and community engagement and outreach are also critical to promoting inclusive and broad participation in STEM education.

The first section of the chapter gives an introduction to various challenges, obstacles, and hindrances that prevent a successful transformation of K–12 science education as well as STEM departments in higher education for inclusion. The second section discusses historical perspectives of the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith (UAFS) – the institutional profile, missions, and visions of UAFS as a regional university. Policies and strategies for addressing the socioeconomic disparity, faculty gender, and racial disparities and cultural competency awareness at UAFS are also highlighted in this section. Other approaches including targeted efforts to recruit and retain underrepresented minority students, provision of financial assistance for students from low-income families, and a creative “Math-up” curriculum innovation to promote inclusive and broad participation in STEM at UAFS are highlighted in the latter section of the chapter. Formation of alliances between UAFS, local K–12 school districts, and governmental and non-governmental agencies to promote broad participation in STEM at UAFS are discussed. The last section of the chapter provides recommendations for adaptation and sustainability of strategies and efforts aimed at transforming national STEM departments for inclusion.

University and college students are fully immersed in a participatory, interactive, digital culture that permeates every aspect of their lives. Today’s educators must find ways to integrate educational technology into their curriculum to fully engage their students in the learning process. The difficulty for educators is vetting educational technologies for pedagogical effectiveness and devoting time to work with them prior to classroom integration. Those responsible for creating faculty professional development training opportunities will find self-directed online learning modules coupled with a virtual learning community an effective training tool. Structured inquiry-based learning, which relies on self-direction, curiosity, and knowledge creation, serves as the framework for such professional development efforts. Faculty and staff from 10, public institutions in New York State created an inquiry-based, self-directed, learning community called Tools of Engagement Project (TOEP). The goal was to help faculty and staff identify and master Web 2.0 tools relevant to their teaching needs for integration into their skill set. Approximately 300 faculty and staff from across these 10 institutions met in a virtual environment during a four-month period to actively engage in a collegial, online community where they were encouraged by mentors and fellow participants to learn about Web 2.0 tools. Results of pre- and post-surveys and participants’ comments have shown this self-directed format to be an effective professional development training tool. The pace of TOEP and the differential teaching and learning aspect of the modules have helped faculty and staff who struggle to find the time to integrate these pervasive technologies into their teaching practice.

Implementing effective strategies for the management of online faculty contributes to the experience of online students by ensuring that faculty are prepared to facilitate courses in a manner in which students are engaged and learning outcomes are attained. Additionally, faculty management impacts the experience of online faculty by reducing isolation; providing direction, feedback, and development; and implementing rewards and recognition to increase satisfaction and engagement. Further, best practices for online faculty management impact administrators by improving the learning outcomes of programs and departments, increasing student retention, reducing faculty attrition rates, and building institutional community. Employing best practices for the management of online faculty serves to create efficiencies and improve operations. This chapter will present best practices for faculty recruitment that aim to reduce the potential for bias and increase collaborative decision making. Additionally, key aspects of effective online faculty training will be discussed, in the context of relevant literature. Further, guidelines for the delivery of engaging professional development in the virtual space will be provided. Best practices for supervision and evaluation will be explored, including expectation setting, regular feedback, and formal assessment procedures. The aforementioned facets of online faculty management will be examined through an analysis of six case studies, based on initiatives that were implemented for the online campus of a small university.

Grounded in the principles of constructivist leadership, the Master Teacher Program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington began as a three-year initiative to highlight and strengthen the extraordinary work and leadership potential of teachers in a multi-district professional development system. Currently in its fifth year, the program has evolved to include an array of collaborative opportunities impacting not only our partnership teachers, but also college faculty, professional development school beginning teachers, and the students they serve. This chapter shares the experiences of program participants and a multitude of ways in which each has engaged in practices meant to enhance and promote teacher leadership in our partnership.

While the important role of information literacy instruction as a central service in academic libraries is well observed in scholarly literature, there has been little examination of the impact of the rapid increase of instructional duties on practicing librarians, whose traditional instruction duties have expanded or whose positions have not traditionally required leading a classroom. The study in this chapter explores librarians’ perceptions of the impact that increased instruction tasks have had on their day-to-day and long-term goals, perceptions of the support they receive in performing their instructional duties, and what types of instruction training they have received throughout their career. The ways in which the addition of instruction duties for librarians have been perceived by the librarians themselves as they strive to increase support for instructional services without impacting the library’s ability to continue to perform traditional public and technical services functions is discussed as a marker of the future needs of the field and the necessity of recognizing professional strain.

This chapter examines the use of virtual communities of practice to group coach and mentor educators and facilitate engaging critical consciousness. A Group Coaching and Mentoring framework became the platform in which the core elements of coaching, mentoring, metacognition, and self-regulated learning strategies were employed. These core elements were applied within virtual communities of practice to manifest self-awareness, reflective thinking, planning for action, and accountability, each of which is vital to the development of critical consciousness. Research shows that fostering critical consciousness creates spaces to address learning equity and gaps in educational achievement. Therefore, this chapter serves as a guide for educational leaders to effectively administer group coaching to raise an educator’s higher-order thinking, plan, problem solve, and co-create. The implementation of this design resulted in increased motivation and willingness among educators to apply new skills and foster new teaching experiences that shaped learning outcomes for their students.