Thriving

This area of programming rounds out the holistic approach CETL-Faculty Success takes to supporting faculty with a focus on community, identity, and well-being. We know from the literature that healthy, thriving organizations are made of flourishing people. This extends to faculty. Accordingly, we have built this program area around the research on flourishing, which is a combination of five empirically validated elements of well-being: positive emotion, engagement, meaning, positive relationships, and accomplishment. While we keep these elements in mind in every area of programming, we also highlight them in specific offerings, such as the Flourishing Faculty Learning Community and the Kathryn Epps Faculty Wellness Retreat.

FLOURISHING FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITY

This faculty learning community was designed to meet the current careerpoint needs of faculty who seek a community of interdisciplinary near-peers for mutual-support as they take a scholarly approach to flourishing in academia. It was launched in the pandemic context with the intention of building positive relationships among a community of faculty at different points in their careers. This learning community is built on the idea that early career faculty can benefit from the mentoring of more senior faculty outside of their departments and that the high level of engagement and motivation of early career faculty can re-energize more senior faculty who were languishing, especially in the pandemic context.

Participants attended their choice of three faculty development webinars per semester out of a menu of options, partnered with CETL-Faculty Success coaches for 1:1 coaching that included a debrief of a validated assessment of strengths, values, and derailers; engaged in monthly mutual mentoring discussions with a subgroup of near peers; and participated in a virtual capstone webinar at the end of each semester. Webinar topics included: Developing Body of Work or Legacy Narratives, Imagining Future Pathways, Designing the Pathway with Development and Mentorship Plans, Resilience, and Leveraging Strengths and Values for Professional Flourishing.

KATHRYN EPPS FACULTY WELLNESS CONFERENCE

Dr. Kathryn Epps was a beloved Chair of the School of Accountancy, whose premature passing shocked the campus community, and especially the women faculty who had been mentored by her. To honor her passion for mentoring, CETL established the Kathryn Epps Faculty Wellness Conference in 2018, with support from Dean Adrian Epps and the Epps family. In addition to the general wellness theme, this year the conference was an opportunity to support the faculty who were working hard to support our students through the pandemic and the racial strife of summer 2020. With the additional support of the Division of Diverse and Inclusive Excellence, and under the theme of “Support Our Sisterhood,” we were able to attract a nationally recognized keynote speaker and workshop facilitators, Drs. Jessica Lopresti and Tahira Abdullah from BARE Mental Health Wellness and Dr. Shelly Harrell from Pepperdine University. With their “soulful” approach, they have helped our faculty get grounded, and build community to support during this challenging year.