Research-based Conversations and Strategies to Improve Faculty Productivity

This mentoring grant provides a forum in which faculty can share research and insights on faculty productivity. All UNT faculty members are invited. The forum will include face-to-face luncheons and online resources. Topics of the forum include but are not limited to:

• What does research tell us about aspects of faculty productivity? What are representative profiles of productive faculty?
• What relationships if any exist between productivity and technology? Which technologies and support in using technologies help faculty to be more productive in research teaching, and service? Which technologies and technological habits may be affecting faculty negatively?
• How critical is faculty motivation to do research? What can leadership do to help improve faculty motivation?
• What are the relevant time factors and support needed for research, grant, teaching, and service?

Other themes will be added based on participating faculty members’ interests. To learn more please contact Dr. Lin Lin (Lin.Lin@unt.edu) or Dr. Mike Spector (Mike.Spector@unt.edu).

Sustaining and Developing Networks through Community Outreach

This grant will be used to improve mentoring of junior criminal justice faculty members by introducing them to contacts in the criminal justice field.  Developing relationships with criminal justice practitioners is essential so that the junior faculty members can foster communication that can promote future research thereby improving their mentoring of students, who will often choose a career in the criminal justice field. For the criminal justice program to be successful, junior faculty members need to establish and maintain  relationships with those in the field as one day they will be mentoring other faculty members. To learn more, please contact Mark Saber (Mark.Saber@unt.edu).

Air Rights, Space, and Materiality Working Group

The goal of our interdisciplinary working group (comprised of faculty from Visual Arts, Biology, and Geography and the Environment) is to use visiting lecturers, workshops, and interviews to deepen and expand our knowledge and develop methodological approaches to the study of air. Why ‘air’? Although acknowledged as essential to sustaining life, air is often taken-for-granted. Air is a medium through which multiple life forms travel, forage and propagate, as well as the primary space for most human activities. Air is also a substance, the atmosphere that consists of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide, and variable amounts of water, particulate matter and pollutants. In this sense, air also is understood as composed of and serving as a repository for our waste and simultaneously a source of wind energy. In addition, the concept of air designates a medium for communication, through which broadcast radio waves, aircrafts, and migratory species travel. And air space is divided and demarcated according to state, institutional, and individual territorial boundaries, underlain by notions of law, property, commodification, and capital accumulation. To learn more, please contact Matthew Fry (mfry@unt.edu).

The Urban Network

This group attempts to move stand-alone research and teaching initiatives to the next level. With the core focus on “The Urban,” the purpose of our multi-principal-investigator, multi-institutional, and multi-disciplinary approach is multifaceted.  Currently comprised of 16 participating team members, representing 3 colleges, we seek to initiate synergetic connections between faculty members, while we build on institutional research strengths. We will develop a network of diverse, new partnerships to support shared scholarly and creative endeavors as we identify innovative technologies and research opportunities at other research universities.  We hope to leverage these opportunities for larger, more impactful, and more visible sponsored projects, while we foster prospective students seeking research mentors. These goals will be facilitated through sustained dialogue, knowledge exchange, and collaborative scholarship across disciplines, across colleges, and across ranks. For more information, please contact Mickey Abel (Mickey.Abel@unt.edu).

Borders and Migrations

Borders carry significant meaning for UNT students and faculty and, as such, this group asks what it means to be “global” and “international” in a world marked by national laws of inclusion and exclusion. This faculty mentoring network in Borders and Migrations links scholars across UNT departments to share strategies for teaching about the opportunities and challenges of an increasingly global world. Its accomplished senior faculty mentor junior colleagues on funding international research, collaborating with international institutions, building transnational networks, and connecting with immigrant and international students. It holds regular mentoring meetings, will host two internationally renowned speakers (Junaid Rana, Illinois and Cynthia Bejarano, New Mexico State), and will have a junior faculty speaker series on borders and migrations in spring 2018. Its scholars examine border studies across Latin America, the Middle East, and the United States and Mexico. They also work with diasporas that include South Asian migrants in Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and Latin America. Both junior and senior faculty have active research agendas and hope to secure future funding for research in locations such as South Asia, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Palestine, Australia, and South America. This mentoring network offers scholars across campus the opportunity to exchange ideas about teaching and researching on borders and migration in a global world. For additional details please contact Kate Imy (Kate.Imy@unt.edu).

Body, Place, and Identity Mentorship Network

UNT’s History Department has developed a vibrant group of professors teaching and publishing in social and cultural history. The “Body, Place, and Identity Mentorship Network” gathers social and cultural historians during the 2017-2018 year to mentor each other three ways. (1) We meet throughout both semesters to provide feedback on each other’s work-in-progress and to develop curriculum like the Theory and Methods course for the new Body, Place, and Identity doctoral concentration. (2) We will host an internationally recognized scholar for a public talk and for a group discussion on program building. (3) At the end of spring term, we will hold a writers’ retreat. This was very successful last year in the Food Studies grant for finishing, continuing, and initiating research projects. Through these meetings, we further social and cultural history teaching and research, increase institutional knowledge for graduate programming, and develop our professional networks. Clark A. Pomerleau is the contact should you wish to learn more: Clark.Pomerleau@unt.edu

Lecturers Mentoring Lecturers Grant

Lecturers Mentoring Lecturers is a professional development opportunity for lecturers at UNT provided by the Teach North Texas program right here on the campus of UNT. Lecturers can participate in a year-long book study and learn instructional strategies to implement in their own classes.  This year, the focus is on assessment for learning that can be used by instructors to measure their students’ progress and gauge their teaching in the classroom.  Two books will be used in this book study:  Andrade and Cizek’s (2010) Handbook of Formative Assessment and Angelo and Cross’ (1993) Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers.  This book study will result in thoughtful dialog about how to measure student learning.  Meetings occur monthly through May. Lecturers and their mentors are invited to participate in this book study to hone their craft and to continue to nurture excellence in teaching.  Contact Kris Sherman at kristin.sherman@unt.edu for more information.

Developing a Mentoring Network

Based on two years of pilot programs, funded in part by a UNT Office for Faculty Success Mentoring Grant, the UNT Libraries is implementing a permanently-funded and sustainable mentoring program for our Faculty Librarians.  We have seen with this program, however, that the needs of a new librarian extend well beyond the confines of a one-on-one mentoring relationship.  The funds awarded by the 2017-18 Mentoring Grant will be used to enhance our current mentorship program by encouraging the development of a mentoring network for each of our newest librarians.  In addition to training and resources on the importance of building this mentoring network, participants will be provided opportunities to meet with faculty in other departments and/or librarians at other institutions.  Protégés will work with their mentors to determine areas of growth and identify and contact those with expertise to establish these relationships. Please contact Karen Harker (Karen.Harker@unt.edu) for more information.

Force and Statecraft Interdisciplinary Program

The Departments of History and Political Science are collaborating to create an interdisciplinary Force and Statecraft Program in part based on the Diplomacy and Military Studies Program (DMS) of Hawaii Pacific University. It will bring together faculty from the two departments in order to satisfy the increasing demands for integrated and interdisciplinary education by redefining the typical undergraduate and graduate learning experience. Although higher education is not structured to support interdisciplinary education because of the traditionally isolated departmental unit that operates within a bureaucratic and hierarchical administrative structure, the Force and Statecraft Faculty will overcome this obstacle and will provide students with an interdisciplinary experience that integrates and compliments the assumptions and perspectives of two widely different disciplines. In this, the faculty of the Force and Statecraft Program will pioneer cross-departmental collaboration and organizational agility—trends that are becoming increasingly popular in higher education. With a team mentoring grant, we will bring to UNT the architect of the Hawaii Pacific DMS Program, Dr. Michael Pavkovic, the current Chairman of the Department of Strategy and Policy at the US Naval War College in Newport, RI, to evaluate the strengths of the two departments and advise on the creation of this interdisciplinary program.  He will also meet with junior and senior faculty, give a professional presentation on his area of expertise, and hold a talk and Q&A session with graduate students within the department. Please contact Michael Leggiere (Michael.Leggiere@unt.edu) for more information.

World Literature Lecturer Mentoring Group

The Department of English’s Lecturer Mentoring Group will use our team mentoring grant to diversify the pedagogy of instructors who teach World Literature courses (ENGL 2210/2220, 2211/2221), the bedrock of the English department’s contribution to the University Core Curriculum. We seek to strengthen the intellectual rigor of our approach to specific literary works that are not part of the British and American literary traditions in which we were trained. Our plan is to hold four workshops this academic year with a scholar from a neighboring North Texas institution who specializes in a field outside our own areas of expertise. These presentations will present cultural and historical information, such as insight into literary conventions (styles, genres, literary modes, etc.), that dovetail with some of the literary texts and traditions that we routinely feature in our courses. For example, the scholar might compare the relative quality of the translation of a work in the textbook we typically use (The Norton Anthology of World Literature) as opposed to alternative translations. Additionally, we will ask each scholar to compose a document or PowerPoint to archive for the benefit of future instructors. While English department lecturers most often teach World Literature, our program will also benefit tenure-system faculty and graduate teaching fellows who also teach these courses. For details, please contact Bryan Conn (Bryan.Conn@unt.edu).