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Facilitating Faculty Research Research is a vital part of the portfolio
for faculty. Primarily it represents a form of continuing education for faculty in as
much as it keeps them connected to the incremental development in their technical field and consequently
allows them to bring new learned lessons to the curriculum for their students. Research
helps the faculty to stay abreast of their field, continuously improve their own skill
set and knowledge and in this regard research keeps the curriculum for the students at a
state of the art level. Research as it moves into peer reviewed publications also is a
way for the faculty to “brand” themselves and their university. It is public relations
activity that shows that the faculty is motivated by continuous improvement and they work for
an institution where students will learn and prepare for a great start to their careers
and lives. In the College of Business and Economics we
facilitate faculty research in many ways. Today I will discuss some of the most important
ways we facilitate this part of the faculty’s portfolio.
#1 – We provide faculty Re-Assign Time. Faculty in cooperation with their Department
Chairs set Annual Research Goals. The Department Chair will Re-Assign the faculty member from
a commitment to teach a course to their commitment to work on a Research Project. There is ongoing
communication between the faculty member and the department chair about progress toward
the research goal. This communication occurs as needed throughout the year, and is always
part of the annual evaluation process for the faculty member. We will talk later about
our business school accreditation process and some of the details about data collection
and reporting surrounding Research. But for now, please understand that the Re-Assign
Time function provides Faculty with valuable time necessary for them to achieve their research
goals. #2 – We provide faculty with Graduate Assistant
support wherever possible. Being completely honest we lost a chunk of GA support this
year, but we are very hopeful to see an increase in support in this area for faculty in the
near term future. So what takes place here – Department Chairs are each provided a
GA. They are privy to the research projects in their departments and are encouraged to
“share” GA time when requested by faculty and as possible with the restraints on available
GA time. It is not a perfect system because of resource constraints, but it has been useful
to help faculty manage their research activities, and as I said we are working to increase Graduate
Assistant numbers in the future to assist faculty in Research.
#3 – We provide faculty Stipends. We initiated research stipends to faculty last year (2012).
So far $10,000 has been allocated and paid to two Junior and two Senior faculty members
for outstanding research achievements. This stipend was provided as an award to show that
the administration in the business school was willing to show monetary support for research
and for those faculty that demonstrated high achievement in branding themselves and Longwood
via successful publications. The stipends can be used as the faculty member decides,
and I must say that the feedback of this financial support via research stipends has been well
received across the college. Faculty has generally communicated that they feel appreciated for
their hard work and see the research stipend as an incentive to continue their realistic
but stretch level goal setting and their efforts to complete projects that become high impact
peer reviewed publications in their field. With this positive feedback in mind, we expect
to continue providing research stipends in the future.
#4 – We provide Travel Support to faculty. Faculty need to attend conferences, particularly
conferences where they are presenting papers related to their research projects. A paper
presentation often leads to a peer reviewed publication. But in any case, conferences
are also venues for faculty to network and hear and learn from other researchers in their
field. Conference attendance is a pathway then to an intellectual contribution for faculty
in their field, and also to their own professional development. Being this critical we budget
every dollar we can to support faculty travel. #5 – We facilitate faculty research by means
of Data Collection and Reporting. The data collection portion is complex and vital to
research. Each faculty members turns in documentation of their conference presentations, their peer
reviewed publications, other invited speaker presentations, published books or book chapters
and… any of their manuscripts that have been submitted and are either under review
by a journal or have been moved into a revise and re-submit for consideration for publication
by a journal. This data is housed with both the department chair and the dean’s office.
It is utilized to alert all faculty members across the college of what each faculty member
is working on and has achieved. For example, whenever a faculty member receives notice
of a peer reviewed journal publication the department chairs sends out a congratulatory
email to all faculty. Why is this important? Just knowing what colleagues are doing in
research inspires individual and collaborative effort in research. Further, this data is
reported to our business school accrediting body and it forms part of the data that is
audited for maintenance of accreditation. This year (2013) we have taken on a project
to fully automate data collection and reporting of faculty research. The greatest expectation
we have with automation is that we will have more timely data that we can disseminate to
faculty across the college so that they can see all of the various intellectual contributions
emerging for faculty in the college and ways to connect and collaborate with their colleagues
on future research projects. That’s our hope and we will work hard to establish this
electronic process. Lastly # 6 – We facilitate faculty research
through Faculty Development. This is my personal favorite. We have begun a new program in the
business school – called the Faculty-In-Residence Program (now affectionately called FIR). It
will serve as series of talks and training opportunities to spur growth in both instructional
quality and research. In the FIR faculty will share the details of their projects from both
technical and research process frameworks. How was the topic discovered and deemed worthy
of exploration. How were colleagues identified and brought into the research team. What methodologies
were looked at and how was the current approach worked into the project and why – what is
the research thread that the current project is part of and will lead to for future projects.
How were certain journals included or excluded for consideration for the manuscripts that
will evolve out of the project? What hidden gem learned lessons from the research project
can be shared that often form the Paul Harvey rest of the story. So much learning comes
from sharing with colleagues. The Faculty-In-Residence in the Business School at Longwood is an eager
partner with the CAFÉ program headed up by Dr. Pam Tracy for faculty development for
all faculty at Longwood University. CAFÉ has provided funding to kick off the FIR program
in the business school and we will be forever grateful for this support and to be a partner
in CAFÉ. Professional Development is the platform for faculty to live the motto of
continuous improvement. It is this activity to learn and grow that we owe our students
as we work to achieve the primary mission
at Longwood.
Thank you for letting me spend some time with you today to discuss Facilitating Faculty
Research. It was an honor to do so.