Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff– Resources for New Faculty
The VPFS office is primarily responsible for programs that support faculty and staff development. This includes new faculty programming, workshops and seminars for chairs and campus leaders, support for campus climate and diversity and for dual-career couples, and the development (with other campus leaders) of compensation tools and other resources for the recruitment and retention of our excellent faculty and staff. What follows is a partial list of the initiatives in the Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff office that you may find useful:
Tenure Workshops
The VPFS office works closely with the Office of the Secretary of the Faculty and the Divisional Committees to disseminate information on the tenure and promotion process at UW-Madison. Workshops on the tenure process at the UW-Madison, offered each January, are designed to help assistant professors understand and successfully navigate the tenure-and-promotion process, including understanding the relation between departmental and divisional committee reviews, how and when to create a tenure dossier, and what resources and support networks are available to new faculty.
Faculty Networking Lunch Series
The Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff and Faculty Services Coordinator co-host a series of informal conversations over lunch that introduce newcomers to colleagues who share similar personal and professional experiences and help continuing faculty stay connected with peers across campus. These lunch conversations also support and provide resources to new faculty as they prepare for tenure and promotion. The series includes opportunities for LGBTQ faculty, international faculty, mid-career faculty, dual career faculty and faculty pursuing research on race and ethnicity.
Academic Leadership Development
The array of academic leadership development programs – designed for faculty who are interested in leadership positions, becoming more actively involved in shared governance, or are interested in the way the university works – is anchored by the CIC Academic Leadership Program and its Department Executive Officers Program. The CIC ALP is a year-long cohort program in which fellows participate in three seminars hosted at CIC institutions, along with an on-campus program. The DEO program includes an annual three-day seminar hosted at CIC headquarters in Chicago.
The VPFS office works closely with the Office of Quality Improvement and the Office of Talent Management on other programs, workshops, and seminars designed for new and continuing faculty in areas such as work-life balance, finding support for new areas of research, and building a support network.
Our office also hosts workshops for helping assistant professors make the transition to mid-career, and what resources are available to help make their time as tenured associate professors as productive as possible.
Sabbatical and Faculty Development Grants
The sabbatical program provides faculty one- or two-semester periods of intensive study to help them become more effective teachers and scholars. Sabbaticals are available to anyone who has had six continuous years of service to UW-Madison.
Faculty Development Grants provide time and resources to faculty who are retraining in a new area, who want to renew their expertise, or to improve their teaching or research skills or to develop new curricular areas or innovations.
The Research-Service grant program was initiated to recognize the service contributions that untenured faculty members, especially women and members of minority groups, are asked to make to the University.
Women Faculty Mentoring Program
The Women Faculty Mentoring Program seeks to support and retain women assistant professors throughout the tenure process. Assistant professors who would like to participate are encouraged to complete a brief questionnaire detailing professional and personal interests. Each assistant professor is matched with a tenured woman who shares similar interests but who is outside her department and, therefore, removed from her promotion and tenure process. This multiple-year match complements departmental mentoring relationships.
Consultation and Support
The Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff serves as an “honest broker” for faculty who wish to consult on personnel matters. The VPFS can provide advice, make connections to other campus offices, and help faculty and staff find networks of support and problem-solving resources on the UW-Madison campus in a confidential setting.
For more information, please visit the VPFS website, or contact Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff Michael Bernard-Donals.