Academic Affairs New Faculty Notes - Message #19

As you have seen in communications from IU and IUPUI, there will be a one-year change to the academic calendar in 2020-2021. You can see the layout of that calendar in this document.

Here are some highlights plus special implications for almost-new faculty (entering their second year):

• Almost all courses will have an online component. The Center for Teaching and Learning has developed intensive training opportunities to facilitate new teaching modes.
• Most classes that have some in-person components will need to think in terms of student shifts: subsets of students working at a particular day or time due to social distancing needs.
• We will all need to be as flexible as possible to advance our own work and our students' learning needs.

Here’s some spots of hope:

• The Center for Teaching and Learning is prepared to support you.
• Nearly all schools have at least some programs and some faculty who are adept at online learning: IUPUI is one of the most established providers of online courses and programs in the IU system. Colleagues can help: maybe you can peek into their Canvas courses for examples.
• Nearly all schools also have at least some faculty who are already used to teaching in a compressed format: summer courses are generally 6 or 12 weeks long and many units offer 8 week half-term courses. Ask to look at syllabi to see how topics and assignments can be paced.
• When Indiana has snow, chances are you won’t need to drive to campus!

And please be prepared to be accessible to your students. They value interaction outside as well as within classes. Sign-up sheets for office hours can be done easily with editable Pages in Canvas.

Congratulations! You have now learned a lot about the rhythms of an academic year. (A very weird year). You experienced juggling research and teaching in your first semester, then you got to juggle research from home and teaching online. Wow! You did learn a lot. You have more learning ahead: how to manage research once it restarts, how to teach online or at least flexibly: even if YOU are in person. Chances are very, very good that some or all of your students will be online.

Here are some ways to keep your productivity up and your stress down:

• Ensure you have at least some vacation. Go, go, go, go, go = Crash! It’s easy to think, “If I just get THIS done, THEN I can relax.” If you relax a bit NOW, then THIS will usually be easier.
  
• Working from home, you may feel disconnected from your colleagues. Take advantage of whatever your department sets up and think of “coffee hours” you can set up yourself.

Tenure-track faculty have until December 30 to request a tenure probationary period extension due to COVID-19. Taking a COVID-19 extension does NOT prevent you from having an extension in the future for the typical reasons (family, medical, or unforeseen research disruptions). Non-tenure-track faculty mostly do not have a required review year, but for those who do, extensions are available to them also.

Plan ahead for your family’s needs.
Watch out for how school (K-12) issues interact with the IUPUI academic calendar and the most important conferences for your professional development. Even “virtual” conferences will take time and attention.

Communicate with your partner, household, friends, and family about your obligations.
Many non-academics are well-meaning but don’t understand how “non-nine-to-five” a faculty position is. Talk to them about protecting time for research, teaching, and your loved ones.

The second year will still be stressful.
You knew the first year would be…brace yourself again.

It DOES get better.
Your third year is really when you hit your stride, for both tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty. Fewer new course preps, glimmers of results from research, and maybe a vaccine?

Know where to find resources.
Healthy IU has many resources (elder and adult care, mental well-being, parenting, webinars, etc.) to make balancing work and life a little more attainable.

The writing group program provides a structure that encourages progress toward publication by promoting regular writing. The summer groups meet via Zoom on Mondays from 9 to 11 a.m. At the start of each meeting, participants share their writing goals for the week. Then, they write quietly for 90 minutes or more. This is a simple, powerful way to make time for writing.

Sign up: facultycrossing.iupui.edu/WritingGroups
Questions? Please contact: ude[dot]iupui[at]ssorccaf

FACET Teaching Tuesdays will continue the last Tuesday of the month during summer 2020. Grab a snack or a coffee and share experiences and ideas in Zoom from 12 noon to 1 p.m. on June 30 and July 28, 2020.

Join here: https://iu.zoom.us/j/586314468

This professional development series is designed to help faculty, staff, and program directors structure various forms of engaged learning for our students during the upcoming 2020-2021 academic year, including internships, service-learning, civic engagement, ePortfolios, global engagement, and capstone experiences.

Where appropriate, session facilitators will highlight ways in which faculty and staff can structure engaged learning experiences within one of the four course formats specified by the Office of Academic Affairs for the fall semester. Tips and advice will also be offered for structuring co-curricular experiences on campus and within the community, while following guidelines specified in the IU Return to Campus Guide and the IU Research Restart Guidelines. This professional development series is open to all IUPUI faculty and staff.

Please visit the CTL’s registration system after July 1 to register for one or more of the sessions in this series which will be offered in the month of July and August. IUPUI faculty are eligible to receive a completion badge and $500 stipend if they complete a series of requirements within the series.

The CTL will provide fall 2020 course development and teaching support through a Canvas site with a menu of learning activities relevant for online, in-person, and mixed online and in-person courses. Instructors will be able to earn a badge by completing required and optional learning activities which will consist of live and recorded webinars, online resources, and articles, and then creating and submitting materials that can be used for their own courses .

This facilitated Faculty Learning Community (FLC) is designed to provide faculty with the opportunity to learn about strategies for increasing student engagement and active learning within online and hybrid environments.

The book, Small Teaching Online, by Flower Darby, will be used to guide the work of the faculty learning community. Faculty participants are eligible to receive a $500 stipend if they complete activities associated with the faculty learning community. 

Faculty may register for one of six FLC’s being offering in the month of July or August using the CTL’s registration system. The book, Small Teaching Online, is available as a free download through our library.