Faculty Fellowship

The First-at-LAS Fellows Program aims to incentivize and support an LAS teaching community where the engagement, academic success, and retention of first-generation and URM students are understood as fundamental to our instructional and mentoring practices.

Fall: Nomination and Selection Period

The First-at-LAS Faculty Fellows Program seeks applications from instructors who teach or coordinate courses, preferably 100-level gateway or major foundational courses in LAS. Senior lecturers, clinical faculty, and tenure-line faculty are eligible. Courses that in Fall 2023 saw DFUW rates of 25% or above should be prioritized in the nomination.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: TUESDAY, JANUARY 16, 2024

The selection committee will review all nominations and select up to three faculty fellows by January 26, 2024.

Spring: Semester 1

Selected faculty-fellows will plan their projects and receive feedback:

• Individualized Consultation: Early in the Spring 2024 semester, each fellow must schedule a consultation meeting with CATE leadership.
• Professional Development: Throughout Spring 2024, fellows must attend at least four (4) of CATE’s Teaching Tidbits Workshops. Fellows also are encouraged to expand their pedagogical toolkits and deepen their understanding of inclusive teaching strategies by completing the Inclusive Education Certificate Program (the Teaching Tidbits Workshops are part of the more extensive certificate program).
• Data Benchmarks: The fellows will receive support from a data research analyst tasked with gathering and assessing quantitative and qualitative data on pass rates, students’ sense of belonging, and specific teaching and curricular design effects on first-generation students.
• Learning Community: Faculty fellows will attend required meetings throughout the semester to share their initial plans, compare their findings, and share acquired expertise during the development of their project.
• Proposed Project Evaluation: At the end of the Spring 2024 semester, each fellow will present their project to other stakeholders across LAS for commentary and feedback.

Fall: Semester 2

The faculty-fellows cohort will teach the courses and quantify the success of integrating inclusive teaching strategies utilizing a combination of student interviews and surveys, assessment outcomes, and final grades. Data will be gathered throughout the semester to analyze and compare past and present data on pass rates, students’ sense of belonging, and the effect of specific teaching, curricular design, and mentoring strategies on first-generation students.

Reporting of Findings

Each fellow will prepare a report summarizing their findings when the semester is completed. The report is due no later than January 17, 2025.

Spring: Semester 3

The faculty-fellows cohort will participate in workshops and serve as consultants for other faculty in their units who teach courses with high DFW rates, especially among first-generation students. The faculty fellows’ work and the results they achieve would, in turn, become the model for future competitions for faculty fellow cohorts. The materials—text and video—they produce will be archived in the First-at-LAS website’s faculty section.

• Faculty fellows will receive $8,000 in their accounts that they can use, if they wish, to pay themselves a summer salary. (These are in addition to the research/travel fund listed in the next bullet).
• First-at-LAS will provide an additional $5,000 research/travel fund to each faculty fellow for travel to conferences, computer or data needs, or other expenses related to their personal research priorities.
• First-at-LAS leadership will support the efforts and act as a thought partner for the First-at-LAS Faculty Fellows. Duties include onboarding and training sessions, facilitating research and offering consultation on first-generation research and best practices, developing and maintaining faculty fellows’ resources and materials (print and digital), and other activities requested by the fellows.
• A First-at-LAS graduate assistant will support the faculty fellows, including logistical support for meetings, events, workshops, production of materials (print and digital), and other assessment activities organized by the fellows.
• An assessment team from the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs and Academic Programs will assess the First-at-LAS Faculty Fellows Program to evaluate its implementation and outcomes. Surveys will allow space for both quantitative and qualitative responses. Data will also be collected and analyzed to establish correlations and comparisons of factors such as students’ academic preparedness (subject placement, time since placement, Math preparation, and compliance with prerequisite structures, for example), class size, the use of inclusive teaching strategies, and attendance policies, among others.
• A CATE staff member will facilitate professional development programming and coordinate the design and implementation of course-specific inclusive teaching strategies.