The Faculty Development Digest highlights events and resources that may be of interest to faculty and other educators on campus. The Digest will be posted on the Faculty Resources site periodically throughout the year. If you have an item that you would like to suggest for inclusion in a future issue, please send the details to Director of Faculty Development Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.
From the Director of Faculty Development:
CREATE news: I am delighted to let you know that we now have a very comfortable couch in the CREATE lounge, which is now complete. To celebrate and show off our amazing couch, the CREATE team shot this video and asks you to remember that we will be there for you and your teaching & research needs!
For midcareer faculty: The Midcareer Pathways program aims to help mid-career faculty identify meaningful career goals and how to achieve them. This may be a great program for you if you are feeling like you need to shake up your teaching and/or scholarship, if you’re at loose ends after earning tenure because you no longer have an obvious goal, or if you are thinking about shifting your career to something a little (or maybe a lot!) different than what you’re doing now. Please see this document for more information and the link to the interest form. Note that the deadline for filling out the interest form is October 6.
Fall Educator Resource Institute: Allegheny faculty, staff, and administrators were invited to participate in the Fall 2025 Educator Resource Institute (ERI) on Monday, August 18. If you missed it or want to look back at the materials, you can find the full schedule here (which also contains links to the slide decks that our presenters used). Whether you attended the ERI or not, please take the time to fill out this survey. Our presenters would appreciate your feedback if you attended. If you didn’t attend, we would love some feedback on what you would like to see in future ERIs and what the obstacles to attending are.
Faculty Development Calendar: Did you know we have a Google Calendar just for faculty development-related events? You can add it to your Google Calendar using this link.
Sabbatical/Pre-Tenure Leave Reports: If you had a sabbatical or pre-tenure leave during the 2024/25 academic year, please remember to submit your leave report using the form on this page. For fall one-semester leaves, reports were due by March 31. For spring one-semester leaves and two-semester (fall/spring) leaves, reports are due by October 31. Questions can be directed to Lisa Whitenack (lwhitena@allegheny.edu)
Allegheny Awesome: If you have a cool pedagogical thing that you’re doing and would like to share, please email me! If you’ve seen a colleague doing something awesome in the classroom or while advising that people should know about, please let me know! If you’ve discovered the key to staying productive in your scholarship while juggling all of the things, send me an email! From there, I will follow up with folks and work with them to write a paragraph or two for a future Faculty Development Digest.
Updates from Student Success
Academic Advising: There are a number of resources available to help you with advising students, whether you are advising undeclared students or students who have already declared. One of your first stops should be the Advising Handbook as you work with students. It is updated each year and is a wonderful resource! The format of the Handbook was refreshed for this cycle and a more significant overhaul is planned for the next cycle. Please also check out this lib guide, created by our new Instructional Design Librarian, Betsy Garloch, to share resources that align with our Advising@Allegheny curriculum.
Dedicated Support for Student-Athletes: The Maytum Center for Academic Success is pleased to announce the addition of Chris Calliari in a newly created position as Allegheny College’s Student-Athlete Academic Support Coordinator. In this role, Calliari will work closely with Gator student-athletes to enhance their academic success, providing personalized support and resources to help them balance the demands of both athletics and academics. The vision for this new position directly supports the first pillar of the College’s Strategic Pathway, which commits Allegheny to ensuring that every student gains knowledge, skills, and career readiness through education rooted in the liberal arts. Calliari will be based in Pelletier Library as part of the Maytum Center for Academic Success and will collaborate with students, coaches, academic success staff, and faculty.
Updates from the Library
Book an Appointment Betsy Garloch: Betsy, our new Instructional Designer/Scholarly Communications Librarian is available to meet and collaborate with faculty to support the development of engaging class activities through integrating new teaching strategies and technology to enhance student learning. Book an appoinment today. Faculty are invited to stop by during open office hours in CREATE, room 308C: Mondays 2pm-4pm, Wednesdays 1pm-3pm, Thursdays 8:30am-11am, or Fridays 1pm-4pm. Visit the Instructional Design page of the Library’s CREATE Research Guide.
Data Bites is Back! – With a FULL LUNCH!: “Faculty Toolbox: Practical Ways to Boost Reading Engagement” (Sept. 19): Tired of asking “Did anyone do the reading?” and getting crickets? Join us in the CREATE Lab for a hands-on session tackling the challenge of student disengagement with assigned readings. Discover creative strategies like concept mapping, jigsaw activities, flipped classrooms, and more—each designed to transform reading into an active, collaborative experience. This session offers practical tools to spark curiosity, deepen comprehension, and energize classroom discussion. Leave with ready-to-use techniques that make reading irresistible and participation impossible to ignore. Fill out this form to RSVP.
Merrick Archives: Out of the Vault Event: Tuesday, September 16, 4:00-5:00pm, “The Origins of Alleghany/Allegheny College.” College Archivist Chris Anderson will showcase and discuss several original documents on the founding of Allegheny College. He will also spotlight Allegheny’s first president Timothy Alden and family. Selections of the Original Library from 1823 will also be on display. The event will be held in the Merrick Archives Reading Room on the 3rd Floor of the Pelletier Library. See this schedule to learn more about future events with the Merrick Archives.
Research Assistance for Students: Allegheny students are encouraged to make an appointment with a librarian for one-on-one research consultations. A research librarian can assist with formulating a search strategy, focusing your research, identifying authoritative articles and books, finding and requesting items, tracking research, using correct citation styles, and more. Students can make an appointment with a librarian at any time during the semester. Appointments are available throughout the week in person or via Google Meet. The library also offers research assistance at the Research Desk, facing the entrance to the library. Librarians and trained students provide on-the-spot research help from 3-9 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
From Global Education
Upcoming events & deadlines: The Global Education Office will be hosting general information sessions through September. More details available here. Please also remember that all regular program applications are due September 20th. You can find information about all of our programs here.
Email list: If you’d like to receive updates from Global Education, please complete the Email List Google Form here.
Scholarships for your advisees: There are 2 scholarships that are available for students applying to study away with deadlines of October 3. You can read about them here and here. For more specific information, contact Casey Gardner (cgardner@allegheny.edu).
Readings, Slides, and Guides
Resources for higher education news & issues: While many of us have particular go-to sources that keep us apprised of the latest topics and news related to our specific disciplines, there are some great resources for news and information on higher ed in general, pedagogy, and scholarship. Many of these resources are either free or freely available with an Allegheny email. Here is a list of Whitenack’s go-to sources for staying updated on higher education news and for bringing things to you in this digest. If you have suggestions for some that I may have missed, please let me know!
Communication Cheatsheet: This article discusses two frameworks in communication theory to help us think about how we’re communicating with our students and includes 5 tips for communication.
Creating a More Accessible and Inclusive Classroom: This article from Faculty Focus outlines a tiered series of steps to make your classroom more inclusive. It begins with some bullet points about where to start, and then successive parts of the article outline ways to take it to the next level.
Is Reading Over for Gen Z Students? Catharina Coenen (the first Director of Faculty Development!) sent along this podcast from The Chronicle about reading and Gen Z students. This might be particularly relevant for SWS instructors. Thanks, Catharina!
Introducing Students to Rubrics: While rubrics are likely familiar to many of us, our first year students (and beyond) may not have encountered them before. Sarah Forbes has written a really great article in Faculty Focus about how to introduce your students to rubrics using an exercise about cake.
Should I say “yes” to this service opportunity?: Inevitably, most of us are going to be asked to join a task force, a search committee, or participate in some other sort of “service” role. And the better you are at this kind of work, the more often you get asked. So, how to decide what to say “yes” or “no” to? If you struggle with this, this article in Inside Higher Ed contains a series of questions to help you out.
Upcoming Opportunities
Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) AI Ready Program: You should have received an email from the AI Task Force outlining this program. This year-long series introduces foundational concepts of AI through topical discussions, practical examples, and guided virtual learning tailored to different campus roles. Whether you’re in academics, administration, or student support, there’s something for everyone, and we have unlimited spaces available as a perk of our membership in the cohort. If you are interested in participating, please contact Katrina Yeung (kyeung@allegheny.edu).
Upcoming webinars from the GLCA: The Great Lakes Colleges Association (to which Allegheny belongs) runs webinars related to teaching every few weeks. Upcoming webinars are: Getting Students to Read with Chris Hakala of Springfield College (September 29, 2025 at Noon), and How Neurodiverse Students Can Use AI to Enhance Their Learning with Todd Zakrajsek of the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (October 10 at Noon). If you think these sound interesting, you should subscribe to the GLCA Consortium for Teaching and Learning’s weekly News of the Week emails! They will send the registration links in those Friday emails, as well as a great roundup of news items from the week.
Project Pericles invites interested faculty to apply for grants for community-engaged course development. Draft applications are due September 19 to the Office of Foundations and Corporate Relations and final applications are due October 3. Please contact the campus Program Director, Tarah Williams, at twilliams@allegheny.edu for additional information. There are two opportunities to apply for: Periclean Faculty Leader Program: $3,000 and $4,500 course grants for Spring 2026, and Civic Engagement Mini-Grants: $1,000 for Fall 2025 and Spring 2026.
For humanities faculty: The Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) has been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to establish the GLCA Academic Leadership Fellows Program, an initiative designed to build academic leadership capacity among humanities faculty and expand the breadth of perspectives contributing to institutional decision-making at GLCA institutions. Through this two-year fellowship, ten tenured humanities faculty from GLCA institutions will engage in immersive leadership experiences tailored to institutional priorities. Fellows will benefit from mentoring, cohort-building, and professional development grounded in self-reflection and strategic self-awareness. “This program will cultivate the next generation of academic leaders whose humanistic perspectives are essential to ethical, mission-driven leadership in higher education,” said GLCA President Mickey McDonald. For additional information, please contact Provost Dearden.
The Teaching Professor Conference on Mental Health and Wellbeing: This is a one-day live virtual conference on November 6, 2025; “with two compelling plenaries and 15 targeted breakout sessions across six practical tracks, you’ll leave with research-backed, ready-to-apply strategies to prevent faculty burnout, support student mental health in your classroom, create a culture of care across your department or campus, and more.” Attendees earn a Credly digital badge to showcase their commitment to fostering mental wellness in higher education. You can read more about the conference schedule here, as well as find information about registration.