The Provost’s Office of Faculty Development and Diversity offers workshops and training sessions for Cornell faculty members throughout the year. If you would like a presentation tailored to your department, please email ofdd@cornell.edu.
Effective Search Practices: It Depends on the Lens
The OFDD holds several workshops per semester on effective faculty search practices. Designed for chairs and faculty participating on faculty search committees, the two-hour-long workshop, It Depends on the Lens, with the Cornell Interactive Theatre Ensemble, includes:
- A filmed scenario of a faculty search committee meeting in progress, including discussion of potential candidates and on-campus interviews
- A conversation with the search committee chair
- A facilitated discussion about participants’ reactions to the scenario
- A short presentation on the social science research that underlies the dynamics of the conversation presented in the scenario, and
- Tools and strategies to conduct an effective search
Effective Academic Interviewing
This one-hour-long workshop addresses scenarios that can arise during the interview process and their potential impacts on the candidate, department, and the institution. Issues discussed include procedures and policies, legal boundaries, and department and institutional climate.
Viewpoints on Tenure and Promotion
This program addresses issues that can occur when faculty evaluate their colleagues at the time of promotion to associate or full professors. Topics discussed include addressing tenure clock stops and career gaps, evaluating collaborative and interdisciplinary work, evaluating service (visible and invisible), time pressures due to external offers, and assessing contributions to a diverse community.
Inclusive and Culturally Aware Mentoring
This 90 or 120-minutes-long session introduces faculty to mentoring models appropriate for all career stages and focuses on inclusive and culturally affirming practices. Participants complete a pre-survey for mentors and mentees where they provide their mentoring expectations. Results are shared in aggregate form to highlight differences around expectations and experiences. Using tools the workshop offers, faculty have opportunities to work through scenarios and try out effective mentoring practices.
Climate Change: The Other Kind
This session introduces (micro) aggression and bystander concepts and offers strategies to intervene in small and large group settings. Facilitators highlight exchanges that may be perceived as harmful or may lead to conflict. Participants are encouraged to engage in uncomfortable conversations that foster open discussions and ultimately lead to learning. Though a case study, small group work, and large group discussions, attendees discuss and apply a practical framework relevant to similarly complex interactions. The program is offered in 75 or 90-minutes-long format.
Academic Department Climate: Experiences of Early Career Faculty
This two-part workshop (each session is 75 minutes long) focuses on new faculty experiences and practices that support their success throughout their career. Exploring behaviors, perspectives, emotions, assumptions, and biases that may affect early career faculty in academic settings, the sessions highlight how people experience institutional culture and practices differently. Participants reflect on their and others’ experiences in new settings and explore concrete ways to support new colleagues. The program offers tools and resources to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment and enable faculty to be successful.
In part one, attendees watch filmed monologues depicting challenging moments, discussing service load, the culture of being busy, academic assimilation, invisibility, falling between the crack, and saying no. Participants have opportunities to discuss the topics and emotions that arise.
In part two, attendees discuss a case study, and view a filmed scenario where a character shares challenges they are experiencing. Participants have opportunities to use tools discussed during part one.
Hang in There and Be Tough
This workshop, offered by the Cornell Interactive Theatre Ensemble, stimulates discussion about the following issues:
- The dynamics of race/gender in the classroom and the attitudes and behaviors that may make the academic environment challenging for faculty and students;
- The effect of such attitudes and behaviors on individual self-esteem and academic performance;
- What faculty can/should do in response to the problems of race/gender in the classroom; and
- The onus of responsibility for the quality of the academic environment with regard to race/gender issues.
Other Teaching Workshops
The Center for Teaching Innovation offers programs for faculty, graduate students and other educators to promote a diverse and inclusive classroom.The Center also developed resources to assist faculty in responding to incidents that may impact learning and the teaching climate.
My Voice, My Story
Cornell University Graduate School offers the program, My Voice, My Story, to assist faculty, staff and students in developing strategies to create more inclusive learning and research environments. The two-hour-long program uses video monologues, based on graduate students experiences, in a facilitated discussion. For more information, contact Sara Xayarath Hernández, Graduate School Associate Dean for Inclusion and Student Engagement, at sh267 at cornell.edu.