Course Category: Course

Writing an Effective and Authentic Diversity Statement: A Video Course for Faculty

Diversity statements are a relatively new part of the faculty job application packet, yet despite their increasing importance, they can be both puzzling and challenging to write. As a faculty applicant, demonstrating contribution to diversity, equity, and inclusion is now a core part of what you are expected to bring to an institution. As with anything that relates to diversity, there is no “right” type of diversity or experience. Rather, in writing a diversity statement, you aim to clearly demonstrate your authentic commitment and experiences as they relate to creating an inclusive community. This video course is divided into two sections. The first will walk you through what a diversity statement is, how to use job announcement materials to aid in your writing process, and how search committees evaluate diversity statements. The second section will help you create a process for understanding your own diversity and aligning it to the institution(s) to which you are applying, and will also teach you common errors to avoid. You’ll further be able to use a writing prompt workbook in order to workshop ideas. This video course is most applicable to faculty, whether you are new to job searching in academia or already have […]

Building Your Career Network: The Relationships Every Faculty Member Needs to Nurture

Faculty know they need to actively develop their research, teaching, and service leadership. By contrast, networking is often seen as something that “just happens” or is an “added bonus” that is not essential to faculty success. Yet networking doesn’t just happen, and it is far more vital than many realize. Networking is more than talking well at social events—it’s about intentionally cultivating unique relationships with people who can step up for you, provide you with guidance and feedback, know your professional goals, and offer support, encouragement, and accountability so that your work has the impact you want it to have. In this video course, we will present five relationships that are essential to faculty networks. You will learn the unique value of each of these relationships, as well as specific strategies for building them. You will identify the limiting beliefs and practices around asking for guidance (e.g., “I feel like a burden”) and sharing your goals (e.g., “this feels like shameless self-promotion”). In their place, you will learn how to utilize mindsets of generosity and strategic vulnerability in your approach to networking. Using our scripts and numerous examples of language as a guide, you will learn how to “make an […]

Using Mindfulness to Improve Overall Well-Being and Productivity: A Video Course for Faculty

Mindfulness is a key strategy in initiating our neuroplasticity—retraining our brains to see and experience more opportunities for empathy, curiosity, creativity, and inspired action. This video course will explore mindfulness from the perspective of a coach who works with academics on flourishing in their careers. Specifically, it will focus on the research-based mental resilience and stress reduction features of mindfulness, with an emphasis on the small, practical shifts that mindfulness can produce in our daily attitudes and behaviors. This video course is most applicable to faculty, as it relates the practice of mindfulness techniques that are specific to the faculty experience. However, anyone looking to integrate even short “mindfulness moments” throughout their day can decrease stress, increase optimism, and achieve self-identified improvements in mood, productivity, and peace by implementing the techniques offered in this course.

Inclusive Hiring Best Practices: Removing Barriers and Mitigating Search Committee Bias

As campuses work more efficiently to recruit and retain candidates, it is imperative that your faculty and staff search committees have an ongoing process in order to review and refine their current hiring practices with an eye toward mitigating bias and removing barriers to inclusivity. This 5-part video series was created to help members of your search committees with managing the following stages of the search process:

DEI Foundations: White Privilege in Higher Education

White privilege—which results in pushing BIPOC people to the margins—has become ingrained in many of our systems and policies in higher education. When we are critically conscious of whiteness and white privilege, we can start to question and dismantle it within our institutions, thereby preventing it from continuing to disenfranchise people of color.  This course will take a foundational approach to help you:   Define race and white privilege  Reflect upon your own identities as they relate to race and white privilege  Identify strategies to recognize and confront white privilege in yourself, others, and systems and structures within higher education  This course will be beneficial to anyone who is a) unfamiliar with the historical and current context of race and white privilege, and b) interested in exploring the application of these concepts in higher education.   This course is part of our foundational Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion series—an intentional collection of personal development and skill-building trainings—which provide education and awareness-building, self-reflection, and ways to speak up and take action. 

Foundations of Customer Service

As competition in higher education intensifies, so do prospective students’ appetites for institutions that provide the best education and experience for their tuition dollars. Instilling a culture of service excellence at all levels of an institution can directly enhance enrollment and improve student retention by providing consistency across branding and the student experience. This video course will introduce you to the foundations of customer service in higher education. Our experts have taken best practices from service excellent experts and applied those strategies to the higher education environment. Part 1 of this course focuses on what customer service looks like in the higher education environment and how service excellence connects to student belonging and retention. Part 2 covers five steps of service that you can adopt into your operations and immediately implement at your institution.

Gender Identity and Gender Bias: A 5-Day Advanced Program

Diversity, equity, and inclusion work has never been more important in higher education. Sign up for our free five-day program to sample our suite of best-in-class diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training through two on-demand courses. New to diversity, equity, and inclusion? Start with our 101 program to lay the foundation for your learning. As faculty and staff, you have the power to help foster more inclusive environments for LGBTQ+ students, faculty, and staff. Because of institutionalized oppression and individual discrimination, LGBTQ+ students (as well as faculty and staff) experience higher rates of violence and harassment, which may result in negative academic and mental health outcomes. Studies have identified factors that contribute to more intentionally inclusive environments for LGBTQ+ community members resulting in greater academic success and better physical and psychological health. To create such environments, you must have the awareness, knowledge, and skills to interact effectively with LGBTQ+ communities. This course will take a foundational approach to help you: