There are many opportunities to get involved with ACCE. Whether you are a junior faculty member looking for guidance and support, a more senior faculty member in search of your next endeavor, or an institutional leader, ACCE programming is intended to advance careers and support institutional goals.
Faculty Professional Development
A series of professional development webinars is available to any faculty member working for ACA member institutions. These webinars concern timely and relevant such topics as file preparation for tenure, promotion, or reappointment processes, grant writing, work/life balance, time management, negotiating service responsibilities, and preparation for campus leadership positions. These presentations are recorded and made available.
Where ACA provides in person professional development (Teaching and Leadership Institute), ACCE also provides professional development opportunities.
Affinity Groups
Mentoring programs are essential at all stages of faculty careers – for thriving faculty at every rank, for helping faculty prepare for leadership positions, and for supporting faculty success through transitions such as reappointment, tenure, and promotion. Research on peer mentoring groups suggests that participation in these groups enhances participants’ sense of belonging and increases faculty members’ intention to remain at their institution (Ensher et al., 2001; Thomas et al., 2015; Griffith & Dasgupta, 2018; Rockinson-Szapkiw & Wendt, 2020). ACCE has modeled its affinity groups from other successful mentoring models (Misra, 2019; Thomas et al., 2015), such as the Cross-Institutional Mentoring Communities of the ADVANCE Midwest Partnership.
Affinity groups will be encouraged to meet online at least monthly and will be allocated their own private group space on the communication platform already in use by the ACA. Affinity group members can use this platform to send group messages, share documents, and host video meetings. Each group will be limited to no more than 10 members so that participants have an opportunity to engage as fully as possible in the group. At least initially, each group will have a facilitator who will work with the ADVANCE project director and others as necessary to schedule meetings and organize sessions. We will encourage all the affinity groups to adopt a set of organizing principles and a general structure to how group meetings will proceed, to provide some predictability and confidence in the process (Thomas et al., 2015).
Indicate your interest in an affinity group here!
Institutional Support
ACCE supports the development and implementation of academic leadership programming to revise hiring, evaluation, promotion, and tenure processes to promote equity and inclusion for women and underrepresented minority STEM faculty. Beginning in Summer 2024, ACCE provided the following activities:
More specifically, in August 2024, ACCE launched its first Institutional Policy & Process Audit cohort. Participating institutions sent teams of two – one academic administrator and one faculty leader – to a kick-off audit workshop, led by facilitator and Steering Committee member Kris De Welde in Asheville, NC. Over the course of two days, the campus teams were introduced to the conceptual framework of Appreciative Inquiry as well as to significant ADVANCE research results. Teams began to plan for their yearlong auditing process, which will occur on their campus.
Want to learn more?
Connect with ACCE to learn more about this grant's activities.
