For almost 100 years, Xavier University of Louisiana has boasted an excellent faculty dedicated to educating the next generation of leaders instilled with the mission to promote a more just and humane society. To support that mission, Xavier University’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development (CAT+FD) elevates faculty development across all career stages and areas of professional responsibility, including teaching, scholarship, mentoring, work-life balance, and service. Read on to learn more about this vital component of Xavier and how it further develops the university’s faculty from Dr. Elizabeth Hammer, Director of CAT+FD and a Kellogg Endowed Professor in Teaching in Xavier’s Psychology Department. 

  

In Spring 2020, Xavier, like all other universities, Xavier shifted to emergency remote teaching in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. CAT+FD was charged with training over 200 faculty on how to design a practical and effective remote class. We developed an effective and efficient system for training faculty by creating an asynchronous course that taught best practices in remote pedagogy while emphasizing inclusivity and the “Xavier touch” students have come to expect from their faculty. 

Recently, in recognition of our long-standing activity and strong reputation in national faculty development networks, as well as our sustainable and scalable response to the pandemic, we were invited to contribute a chapter to “Higher Education Beyond COVID: New Teaching Paradigms and Promise (Routledge).” This book highlights the variety of ways Centers across the nation supported their faculty and ways in which their practices grew and improved. 

 

As a fully collaborative team, we contributed a chapter entitled “Disruption is the Norm: A Faculty Development Center’s Response to the Future.” In this chapter, we argued that the lessons we learned during COVID-19 better positioned us to do our work in the face of all disruptions, whether they be hurricanes, bomb threats, or cyber-attacks. We argued that all Centers, including CAT+FD, can utilize the systems and procedures refined during COVID-19 to help faculty provide instruction continuity for their students. Based on our experiences, we offered the following recommendation. 

• Create living, adaptable resources.  
• Double dip by incorporating resource creation into every workshop.  
• Fill your own cup by making self-care part of your Center’s culture. 
• Strengthen community within your institution. 
• Be prepared to help our faculty prepare students to deal with and take on the grave challenges facing humanity and the planet. 

As a team, we are proud that we were able to make these recommendations to other faculty developers and that we represent Xavier’s mission beyond our own campus. 

 

Elizabeth Yost Hammer is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and a Kellogg Professor in Teaching in the Psychology Department.