Committing to Faculty Well-being

Yesterday morning, Valencia College President, Dr. Kathleen Plinske and I got to welcome our extraordinary faculty and academic leaders to the 2024-2025 academic year at our annual Academic Assembly. To prepare, I reflected on the past year and engaged with research on faculty well-being. In this brief piece, I compile some of what I learned and outline the commitments I made to our faculty, both to make these commitments public and to support fellow academic leaders getting ready for the fall.

Reflecting on Academic Year 2023-2024

In preparation for this event, my team and I reflected on the academic focus areas we had identified for 2023-2024:

1. Exploring and grappling with being a learning-centered institution where a lot of learning is now facilitated online
2. Strengthening our practice of supporting students holistically
3. Developing a strategy for students’ career exploration and readiness
4. Expanding engagement with local communities to support college and career readiness
5. Enhancing our capacity to engage with data to improve student learning and success

Certainly, each of these focus areas is as relevant and important as it was a year ago, and I was able to describe and celebrate some of the progress made in each. Nonetheless, I have continued to hear about post-COVID faculty exhaustion and that our attempts to support faculty (and our academic deans) have fallen short. This has been weighing on my heart for quite some time.

It's partly why we asked the brilliant Dr. Sarah Rose Cavanagh to give the keynote address at our Gateway Summer Summit, an inaugural event designed to bring together faculty who teach our critical gateway courses, the focus of our current quality enhancement plan. Dr. Cavanagh's research and publications have centered both student- and faculty well-being, which was reflected in her remarks. There was a collective gasp when she clicked to the slide citing Simmons University associate professor Eugenia Correia Knight, LICSW, CHHP's pithy insight,

"For our students to be well, they need us to be well."

It was a turning point for me. I set aside time this summer to read a few articles and books associated with faculty burnout. Slowly, I came to the realization that 5 focus areas are simply too many for my colleagues given our current times and context.

Prioritizing Faculty Well-Being in AY 2024-2025

Therefore, as I shared with faculty yesterday morning, we will have ONE academic priority for the 2024-2025 Academic Year: Supporting faculty members’ full humanity as they prioritize their own well-being alongside that of their students.

What will this look like in practice?

To begin, it means we will center faculty well-being in ongoing work such as our review of the Essential Competencies of a Valencia Educator and the comprehensive, collaborative faculty roles and workload project. Skillfully designed by Dr. Carla McKnight , our Vice President of Organizational Development and Human Resources, and co-led by Collegewide Faculty Association President Chris Borglum and Assistant Vice President, Human Resources Ryan K. , the work plan emphasizes that any proposed solutions must "provide enhanced opportunities for faculty rest and renewal."

We must also maintain a posture of humility and inquiry, seeking to learn how faculty are experiencing their work. One new, invaluable resource for our Valencia learning is a report synthesizing the findings of a faculty and staff well-being study conducted by our Director, Learning Assessment & Program Improvement, Nichole Fehrenbach, as part of her doctoral research. At Academic Assembly, Nichole described the theoretical framework for her study, Edward L. Deci and colleagues' (2017) self-determination?theory in work organizations, including the impact of autonomy, relatedness, and competence on employee motivation and well-being. Both this framework and her findings are replete with insights.

Key Insights from Scholars and Scholar-Practitioners

What else did I learn this summer?

From Educational Leadership and Higher Education Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Xueli Wang's (2024) recent book Delivering Promise, I'm coming to see that

• …our “student first” ethos, especially in community colleges, has obscured the need to prioritize educators;
• …some of our post-pandemic practices (like additional online teaching) are contributing to faculty fatigue; and that
• …today’s faculty work is both "elusive and evolving," such that supporting faculty will require a deep, updated understanding for the nature of faculty work and demands on their time.

From Dr. Rebecca Pope-Ruark, PhD 's (2022) Unraveling Faculty Burnout, I'm learning that

• …connection and social support can be powerful antidotes to faculty burnout; and that
• …finding balance as a faculty member requires intentionality – plus a combination of rest, boundary setting, and maybe even a hobby.

Academic Affairs Commitments

With all of this in my heart and mind, I let our faculty know that my team and I (particularly, our exceptional campus provosts, Wendy Givoglu , Lancelot A. Gooden, Ed.D. , Danny M. Hoey, Jr., Ph.D. , & Sobia K. and AVP, Academic Affairs Geni Wright ) commit to the following:

• …carefully reading and discussing the results of Nichole’s study – and creating opportunities to discuss them with faculty and academic leaders;
• …evaluating proposed new work in terms of whether it will support or frustrate the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness at work;
• …using the faculty roles and workload project as a learning experience for us– to refine our understanding of Valencia College faculty members' elusive and evolving work;
• …rethinking our faculty support and development programming as part of the updated Essential Competencies implementation (one of Wang's suggestions);
• …asking faculty explicitly about burnout and bandwidth – and then respecting their bandwidth and workload (one of Cavanagh's suggestions from this recent Chronicle article);
• …partnering with faculty and academic leaders to find ways to rekindle JOY in teaching and in our collaborative work (also inspired by Cavanagh).

This last commitment embodies my greatest hope for the 2024-2025 Academic Year for our Valencia faculty and for faculty everywhere:

May you find JOY in knowing that you ARE enough, that you DO enough, and that you are making an extraordinary difference for your students, for one another, and for the communities you serve.

Wishing you each a joyful new academic year!