Faculty Development and Community

Faculty Governance

Faculty Community

Faculty Development: Pedagogy

Faculty Development: Scholarship and Research

FACULTY GOVERNANCE

Faculty Handbook and Bylaws

The faculty handbook can be found on the Faculty tab of my.Wofford.edu under the heading: Policies and Procedures. The handbook introduces you to faculty duties and responsibilities and college policies. Similarly, the faculty bylaws can also be found on my.Wofford.edu.

Faculty Meetings

All tenure-track and tenured faculty are expected to attend monthly faculty meetings. To find the list of dates for faculty meetings in the upcoming semester, search “faculty meeting” on the online academic calendar.

The faculty bylaws can be found on the faculty tab of myWofford.edu under the heading: Policies and Procedures.

FACULTY COMMUNITY

Lunch on campus

There are several food options on campus, but most faculty eat together at Burwell Dining Hall. There is a faculty and staff dining room on the first floor towards the back, behind the drink station. When you use your ID card to pay for lunch, faculty and staff receive $1 off the regular price. Faculty love to meet new faculty and you are welcomed and encouraged to sit anywhere there is space.

New Faculty Program Lunches

The New Faculty Program organizes monthly lunches for the first three semesters for all new faculty to discuss topics that couldn’t be covered during the August orientation that require a more in-depth conversation. These lunches are informal and serve to create community between the first-year cohort and to provide the opportunity to meet more faculty and staff in different campus offices throughout the year. You will receive the schedule for the new faculty lunches at orientation. The college expects new faculty to attend all New Faculty Program events throughout their first three semesters at Wofford.

Colleague Coffee Hour

The Colleague Coffee Hour program pairs a newer faculty member with a more established faculty member to meet for an informal coffee. The associate provost for faculty development covers the cost of these meetings. There is no set agenda or plan for the meetings. You can discuss whatever you’d like, Wofford-related or not, and just get to know someone new on campus. Involvement for both new and more established faculty is completely voluntary, but we hope many will take this opportunity to meet colleagues in different departments that you might not otherwise have many chances to interact with. If you are a new faculty member interested in going for a coffee with a colleague you might not yet have met, send the new faculty program co-ordinators an email and we will set it up for you! 

Faculty Research Talks

Each semester there are lectures/talks by faculty about their research. Details will be posted in the Daily Announcements and posters will be posted around campus to advertise them. If you’re interested in attending or participating in a talk, contact Dr. Kimberly Hall (hallka@wofford.edu).

Write-on-Site Faculty Writing Group

The Write-On-Site Faculty Writing group was created for those who find it difficult to make time for writing. The write-on-site group meets weekly in a supportive setting with colleagues without distraction from teaching, advising or home life. Feel free to join once, every week or just every now and then. Contact Jocelyne Franklin for more information.

FACULTY INTEREST GROUPS

There are several faculty groups on campus. If you’re interested in joining any, feel free to email the contact person listed to find out more.

Spartanburg Life

Wofford Parents WhatsApp Group

Purpose: To provide a sense of community and a place to ask and answer questions relevant to raising children in Spartanburg.
How often it meets: Never (communicates over WhatsApp only)
Contact: Katherine Steinmetz (steinmetzkr@wofford.edu) or Jen Bradham (bradhamjl@wofford.edu) for more information. If you would like to be added to the group, please include your cell phone number. We can help you set up WhatsApp if you don’t already use it!

Academic Groups

Spartanburg Medievalists

Purpose: Informal group of anyone working in any field of medieval studies (500-1500 CE) at Wofford, Converse, Upstate and SMC.
How often it meets: Currently ad hoc until the pandemic slows down.
Contact: Natalie Grinnell

Personal Enrichment

Wofford Women’s Investing Club

Purpose: To educate members on the stock market and general financial acumen. Each member follows a stock and contributes a minimum of $25 a month for the group’s financial portfolio. All members are female-identifying. Female faculty members are welcome to attend a meeting to see what the group does as a guest.
How often it meets: Monthly, on the Tuesday following the 25th (or the 25th if a Tuesday), in the Holcombe Room in Burwell.
Contact: Jameica Hill

Women’s Leadership Group

Purpose: Women’s Leadership (WL) supports the development and deployment of women's leadership skills. WL believes that faculty and staff of diverse backgrounds and at all career moments should envision themselves as leaders in multiple areas of their lives. WL will enhance the campus climate for women by developing leadership competencies, cultivating collaboration and empowering women's voices.
How often it meets: Variable: Typically organized are two workshops and four lunches. The group also hosts one keynote speaker and two luncheons per academic year.
Contact: WomensLeadership@wofford.edu

Healthy Living

The Wofford Wellness Center organizes several health initiatives for faculty and staff to allow you to participate in healthy habits with colleagues. Yoga classes for faculty and staff are held twice a week on campus. Faculty and staff can also participate in the campus walking challenge. Find more information on the Employee Wellness pages and look for more information in the Daily Announcements.

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT: PEDAGOGY

Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) aims to promote innovative teaching practices at Wofford, sparking conversations among educators, building pedagogical resources and hosting faculty-led talks and workshops. CETL provides monthly pedagogy workshops during the first year as part of the New Faculty Program. Attendance is expected for tenure track faculty and optional but highly encouraged for all visiting faculty.

Monthly CETL Teaching Workshops for New Faculty

Wofford College provides the highest standards in higher education teaching. The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning offers a variety of teaching support, offering events and workshops throughout the year, in addition to dedicated support for pre-tenure faculty during New Faculty Orientation. The CETL director can assist with new curricular activities and help faculty address complicated topics with sensitivity and foster innovative approaches to engagement and assessment. Keeping abreast of new developments in the scholarship of teaching and learning, the director of CETL provides support for faculty by problem-solving and discussing teaching effectiveness, pedagogy and/or the scholarship of teaching and learning.

CETL administers Teaching Innovation Grants, which are small internal grants for faculty to use for course materials, speakers or professional development. You will receive emails from CETL when applications open and details of the application process.

CETL organizes monthly teaching and pedagogy workshops for all new faculty as part of the New Faculty Program. Attendance is expected for tenure-track faculty and highly encouraged for visiting faculty.

Weekly CETL Lunches

The CETL sponsors weekly drop-in lunches at Burwell for faculty to eat lunch together and discuss anything related to pedagogy. Come for support, advice or to share successes and ideas. Lunch is provided by the CETL with no sign-up required. We particularly encourage new faculty to join in. Days/times each semester will be announced via the CETL newsletter which is emailed to all faculty.

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT: SCHOLARSHIP AND RESEARCH

Statement on Scholarship

Wofford College takes an inclusive approach to faculty research. The college values and supports scholarship and research in many different forms. Informed in part by Boyer, Earnest L. (2004). Enlarging The Perspective. Physical Therapy. 84(6). 571-575, Wofford understands scholarship to be work that falls within and beyond the following categories:

  • Scholarship of Discovery and Creativity
  • Scholarship of Integration
  • Scholarship of Application
  • Scholarship of Pedagogy

View the full description of Wofford’s Statement of Scholarship.

Faculty Information Form

The annual information form is submitted to the provost during the first week of May. The annual faculty information form can be found on my.Wofford.edu > Faculty > Links by Type > Forms.

The Wofford College community benefits from the efforts and accomplishments of its faculty members in the areas of teaching and advising, scholarship and service. As such, it is appropriate that these activities be regularly evaluated, documented, and considered for promotion, tenure and salary increases. To be sure that all activities are appropriately considered at such times, each faculty member should compile this information annually and submit it to the Office of the Provost.

Some faculty find it easier to keep this document at hand or open throughout the semester and add to it continuously rather than in one go at the end of the year. If you would like suggestions of things to include or would like to see an example, feel free to reach out to the coordinators of the New Faculty Program for assistance.

Tenure

Wofford College underwent a review of its tenure process resulting in a new set of tenure guidelines in 2019. All faculty hired in 2019 or later should use those guidelines. In addition to college-wide tenure guidelines, each department has a set of expectations of how faculty in their departments should achieve tenure. These documents can be found in my.Wofford > Faculty > Policies and Procedures.

Write-on-Site Faculty Writing Group

The Write-On-Site Faculty Writing group was created for those who find it difficult to make time for writing. The write-on-site group meets weekly to write together in a supportive setting with colleagues without distraction from teaching, advising or home life. Feel free to join once, every week, or just every now and then. Contact Jocelyne Franklin for more information.

Faculty Research Talks

Each semester there are lectures/talks by faculty about their research. Details will be posted in the Daily Announcements and posters will be posted around campus to advertise them. If you’re interested in attending or participating in a talk, contact Dr. Kimberly Hall (hallka@wofford.edu).

Faculty Travel

Wofford College provides faculty with funding to assist with travel to conferences, workshops and meetings.

Faculty need to fill out the Faculty Travel Request Form located on my.wofford.edu under the Faculty tab. This form asks for the trip’s purpose, dates, location and the estimated cost of the trip, including travel, registration, lodging and food.

Requests for reimbursement must be submitted within one month of traveling. The Expense Reimbursement Form is available on my.wofford.edu under the Employee tab in the Accounts Payable section. A description of how to complete the form is also available there. Completed Expense Reimbursement Forms should be delivered to the Office of the Provost.

Internal Grants

Wofford has many internal grants for faculty to apply for annually. All tenured, tenure track, and visiting assistant professors are eligible to apply.

Summer Research Grants

The summer research grants are awarded through a competitive program administered by the Faculty Development Committee. Full-time faculty in any academic discipline are invited to apply. The type of project may vary greatly across academic disciplines and faculty interests. Thus, “scholarship” is defined broadly, to include community-based projects, literature reviews, laboratory work, fine art performance and production, and more. Applications are found in the faculty tab of myWofford; they are due in early November.

Student-Faculty Collaborative Scholarship Fund

Wofford College highly values the potential for learning, mentoring, and personal and professional growth afforded through collaborative scholarship among students and faculty members. As such, the Student-Faculty Collaborative Scholarship Fund seeks to promote and support scholarly activities across the campus. Projects are open to any academic discipline and any full-time faculty member. The provost’s office is aware that the type of project and type of collaboration may vary greatly across academic disciplines and faculty interests. Thus, “scholarship” is defined broadly, to include community-based projects, literature reviews, laboratory work, fine art performances and production, and more. These projects can be designed such that students and faculty could work in parallel or conjunction. Applications should be submitted to the Faculty Development Committee by Feb. 1.

The fund can be used for compensation for faculty and students, a student meal plan, supplies and consumables, and any necessary travel. Faculty members are welcome to combine these funds with external funding from sources such as SCICU, NASA/ Epscor, etc.

Over 200 students and 35 faculty members have participated in the student-faculty collaborative research program in recent years. Learn more by visiting the Office of Undergraduate Research website by contacting Dr. Ramón Galiñanes, Jr., Director of Undergraduate Research and Post-Graduate Fellowships.

International Development Award

As part of the Office of International Programs' mission, Wofford is committed to connecting faculty and staff with professional development opportunities overseas. Contact Amy Lancaster, dean of international programs, with any questions. View the development opportunities from the Office of International Programs.

External Grants

The Grants Office assists faculty and administrators in identifying external funding sources (including foundations, corporations and government agencies) for institutional grants as well as those in support of faculty research and scholarship projects; work with faculty members in the preparation and submission of grant proposals; prepares and submits proposals for institutional support; and administers grants and awards from external sources.

The office provides the following services:

  • Identification of and research on potential funders
  • Dissemination of Request for Proposal (RFP) and other opportunities
  • Budget development
  • Editing and document review
  • Administrative review and signatures/letters of support
  • Proposal submittal
  • Post-award administrative services

For questions about external grants, please contact Ann Jenks, Director of the Office of Sponsored Faculty Research.

Wofford’s Grants Office is a collaborative effort of the Office of the Provost, the Business Office and the Office of Philanthropy + Engagement.