Faculty Resources

Upcoming Events

Canvas Workshops On Thursday, August 17 at 10am, Instructure trainer Cory Chitwood will facilitate a virtual, 90-minute Canvas Essentials workshop, aimed at new Canvas users or anyone who would appreciate a refresher on the basics of Canvas. Sign up via this form.

Cory will also run a virtual, 90-minute Q&A session at 1pm on August 17. Participants will have the opportunity to submit questions during the session and Cory will aim to address as many as possible during the allotted time. Sign up here.

Fall Teaching Circle If you would like to register your interest in participating in a fall teaching circle, please complete this form. The form also asks if you would be willing to serve as the facilitator. Director of Faculty Development Rachel Weir will use the information received via this form to finalize the structure of the group. For reference, a teaching circle is a group of up to a dozen faculty members who meet on a regular basis throughout the fall semester to share issues, ideas, and advice connected to their teaching in a confidential and supportive setting. Please contact Director of Faculty Development Rachel Weir with any questions.

New Faculty Orientation Incoming full-time faculty are asked to reserve Wednesday, August 16, and Friday, August 18, for New Faculty Orientation. You will receive more information from Director of Faculty Development Rachel Weir in early August, but feel free to reach out to her before then if you have any questions. Please also take look at the New Faculty Information page.

If you’re not familiar with Canvas or would like a refresher, you are encouraged to sign up for one or both of the August 17 Canvas workshops (see above). Also, check out the Canvas Tips page for information on getting started.

Reimbursement Requests

Please remember to turn in all Faculty Travel or ASC Grant reimbursement requests to Director of Faculty Development Rachel Weir by Friday, June 9, so that they can be processed before the end of the fiscal year. Original, itemized receipts should be accompanied by a completed Travel/Entertainment Report form with an ink signature; electronic submissions are generally not accepted. Additional information is available on the Faculty Funding page.

Paperwork can be dropped off in Arter Hall during business hours; the door on the Quigley side of the building should be unlocked at these times. You can either leave everything in Rachel Weir’s mailbox in Arter 103 or slide it under her office door (Arter 114A). Please contact her with any questions.

Reimbursement requests for the next fiscal year will not be processed until early August.

Report Reminders

ASC Funding Reports – June 30 If you received an Academic Support Committee grant for the current fiscal year (July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023), please remember to complete the Funding Report submission form by June 30. This form and further details are available on the ASC Grant Applications page. Please contact Director of Faculty Development Rachel Weir with any questions.

Activities Reports – August 1 This year’s Annual Activities Report has been significantly streamlined and should now be submitted via this Google form. Instead of asking for information that is available through other sources and reports, you are asked to identify, reflect upon, and highlight significant innovation and changes in your work. Your CV will be the primary location for listing activities and accomplishments; the Google Form will be the place where you can briefly reflect or provide context as appropriate. It will be most helpful if you can identify on your CV (via bold or highlighted text, for example) which elements are newly added in this reporting period (June 2022-May 2023).

These reports are not intended to reproduce the detail required for a self-evaluation, and are primarily for reflection and reporting of activities not listed on your CV. With your updated CV, this report will offer appropriate audiences, such as the Provost, a better understanding of the broad range of faculty work occurring across campus. For most faculty in most years, completing the form should take less than 30 minutes. Please submit your report via the Google form by August 1, 2023. Department chairs will receive copies of their faculty’s Annual Activities Reports from the Provost’s Office after all reports have been submitted.

Leave Reports – October 31 If you had a sabbatical or pre-tenure leave during the 2022/23 academic year, please remember to submit your leave report using the form on this page. For fall one-semester leaves, reports are due by March 31. For spring one-semester leaves and two-semester (fall/spring) leaves, reports are due by October 31.

Spring Educator Resource Institute

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Spring 2023 Educator Resource Institute on Tuesday, May 16. Materials from all of the sessions are now linked to the schedule.

Whether or not you attended the ERI, we invite you to complete the ERI survey. As part of this initial survey, ERI participants will have the opportunity to opt into a follow-up survey that will be distributed later this year to collect information about the kinds of changes participants made as a result of the ERI.

The Fall Educator Resource Institute will take place on Monday, August 21. Click here to save the date on your calendar.

Canvas Tips

Student Access to Completed Courses
When creating Canvas courses, faculty have the ability to control when students can access the courses. Changes can be made via the Settings page in a Canvas course, in the Participation section. If you’d like to allow your students to access the course after the semester is over, just uncheck the box next to “Restrict students from viewing course after term end date.” Note that it’s not possible to allow only specific students to access the course. See this page for further details.

Downloading Canvas Gradebook
If you’ve been using the Canvas gradebook and would now like to download a copy for your records, follow these steps:
– Open the gradebook by selecting Grades from the navigation menu in the Canvas course.
– At the top of the page click Actions; this will open a dropdown menu.
– Select Export Entire Gradebook. This will download the gradebook as a CSV file, which you can then save in your Google Drive.
If you have applied any filters to the gradebook using the View menu at the top of the Grades page, choose Export Current Gradebook View to download only the filtered version.

See this page for further details.

Micro-Credentials

The development process is now open for micro-credentials to be launched in Spring 2024. If you, your department, or a team of faculty wish to develop a micro-credential, please fill out this form at your convenience.

The deadline for submitting micro-credential proposals to the Curriculum Committee is October 5th, 2023. With the number of potential credentials being considered, submitting the initial intake form linked above between now and August would be ideal, but not required.

For more information, please see the micro-credential website or email Byron Rich with questions. The full micro-credential proposal is available upon request.

Data Science Workshop for Faculty

Faculty are invited to register for a summer workshop, to be held virtually, on infusing data science in STEM education. Funded through NSF award 1917002, the workshop provides curricular materials for incorporating data science concepts in early (first/second year) courses in both STEM and Social Science undergraduate education. More information about the workshop, including stipends offered and participation in the grant activities beyond the workshop, can be found here. (The application deadline is listed as May 15, but appears to have been extended.)

Summer Planning Workshops

In the April Digest, we mentioned two free, online summer strategy sessions offered by the NCFDD (National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity). If you missed those sessions, you can view the materials by following the links below:

5 Tips to Avoid Summer Burnout
– 2023 recording

Every Summer Needs a Plan
– 2022 recording
– 2023 slides

For other tips on how to address exhaustion and burnout, see this NCFDD post.

If you are prompted to create an NCFDD account, check out this page for instructions.

FCR Updates

The Foundation & Corporate Relations (FCR) office invites you to check out the grant opportunity below and to contact them early and often at fcr@allegheny.edu if you’re thinking about applying for a grant.

Humanities Faculty: Community-Engaged Course Development & Voter Education The Project Pericles’ Periclean Faculty Leadership (PFL) Program in the Humanities Grant provides $4,500 grants to design new or significantly revised courses in the humanities that incorporate community-initiated projects and voter education. There are multiple deadlines to apply. If you are interested, please complete the FCR office’s grant proposal endorsement form, indicating which deadline you are interested in.

STEM Faculty: NSF Mid-Career Advancement Grant The MCA program offers an opportunity for scientists and engineers at the mid-career stage to substantively enhance and advance their research program and career trajectory. Mid-career scientists are at a critical career transition stage where they need to advance their research programs to ensure long-term productivity and creativity but are often constrained by service, teaching, or other activities that limit the amount of time devoted to research. MCA support is expected to help lift these constraints to reduce workload inequities and enable a more diverse scientific workforce (more women, persons with disabilities, and individuals from groups that have been underrepresented) at high academic ranks. If you are interested, please complete the FCR office’s grant proposal endorsement form.