Year in Review: OFA's Impact in 2024
This year, the Office of Faculty Affairs welcomed over 200 new faculty members at New Faculty Orientation; held 57 workshops and professional development events; received 47 campus award nominations for excellence in faculty teaching, research, service, mentoring, and leadership; and reviewed 194 cases for tenure, promotion to full and associate professor, PTK promotion, permanent status (librarians), and appointment to emeritus/emerita status. In addition, we have launched new programs and initiatives this year to improve faculty life at the university. We have listed some highlights below:
Promotion
Appointment, Evaluation and Promotion (AEP) Manual: Building upon the work of the Professional Track Faculty (PTK) Working Group, OFA released a draft Appointment, Evaluation and Promotion (AEP) manual, seeking to create greater uniformity throughout AEP processes across campus. In Spring 2024, we solicited feedback from the broader campus through open forums and an online comment form. Following several rounds of revision, the AEP Manual was published in July 2024 and is scheduled to take full effect in July 2025. Colleges and units are currently revising their AEP plans to bring them into alignment with the Manual, and OFA continues to hold workshops to introduce faculty members and administrators to this document.
Development
ADVANCE: Throughout the year, the ADVANCE Program collaborated on and led impactful initiatives to strengthen and support the UMD community. We engaged 85 faculty members through four, year-long peer networks, each tailored to support faculty in their professional growth. ADVANCE Professors provided mentoring and support to over 1,120 faculty members, facilitated workshops, and advocated for equity-minded policy changes across various colleges and departments. And, in fall 2024, ADVANCE conducted Faculty Search Committee workshops in partnership with the Office of Diversity and Inclusion for 45 faculty, staff, and graduate students.
BIG 10 Academic Alliance: A cohort of department heads participated in an intense program (Department Executive Officers) with their BIG 10 colleagues to network, refine their skills, and learn problem-solving strategies. A second cohort participated in the BIG 10 Academic Alliance’s Academic Leadership Program, which brings developing leaders to three BIG 10 universities to network, learn about each other’s institutions, and explore topics such as the current state of higher education, resource management, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Both groups also met together weekly to learn about leadership at the University of Maryland.
CLOC: The Center for Leadership & Organizational Change successfully launched its Excellence in Supervision (EIS) pilot for 180 supervisors across four units (Residential Facilities, College of Education, College of Information, and University Relations). CLOC is preparing for the campus-wide launch of EIS in early 2025. CLOC provided consultation, coaching, and training to over 60 academic & administrative units on campus and provided more than 30 learning and development sessions for staff and faculty across campus. CliftonStrengths remained popular, with over 500 faculty and staff participating in a CLOC-sponsored CliftonStrengths session.
Faculty Forums: The Office of Faculty Affairs held open faculty forums on Disability Awareness, Digital Accessibility, Setting Boundaries, and Academic Freedom and Free Speech, engaging over 1000 TTK and PTK faculty attendees.
Fearless Unit Leadership held six sessions in 2024, helping chairs and unit heads network and learn about managing conflict, working with their deans, creating a positive climate in their department, and other pressing topics.
Orientations for new faculty members and new administrators welcomed over 200 colleagues to the University of Maryland.
TerrapinSTRONG Symposium: The University held the second TerrapinSTRONG Symposium for faculty and staff. Organized by a partnership between the Office of Faculty Affairs, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), and University Human Resources (UHR), this one-day symposium brought faculty and staff members together to share insights and expertise about diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging (DEIJB), focused on the theme of “Inclusive Leadership.” Presentations bridged the work of scholars, researchers, and practitioners to provide insights and encourage collaboration. Over 175 participants attended 19 presentations on a wide variety of topics related to the Symposium’s theme, ranging from inclusive classroom leadership to inclusive hiring to advocacy for change. Learn more about the Symposium.
Policy and Procedures
Professional Track Faculty Instructional Workload Policy: The Professional Track Faculty (PTK) Instructional Workload Policy working group prepared a draft policy in Spring 2024. After receiving and incorporating feedback from the broader campus community, the draft policy was transmitted to the University Senate in Fall 2024. The Senate’s Faculty Affairs Committee is expected to start their review of the draft policy in Spring 2025.
Reporting
Updates to Faculty Success: We continue to make updates and improvements to the Faculty Success system. Key changes include: integration with the University Libraries digital repository (DRUM); biweekly imports of publications from Academic Analytics; and, inclusion of Committee and Reader roles in the Roles list for Research Advising. In addition, the University CV Template has been revamped with a streamlined layout and a companion annotated version of the template is also available. We have also added to our library of “how-to” videos, providing guidance on how to eliminate duplicate entries w/Compare and Merge tool and how to export data.
Workday: Workday officially launched on November 15th, replacing multiple existing Human Resource and Finance systems with an integrated cloud-based solution. This transition has led to some changes in the Faculty Success System.