Rethinking faculty development

Faculty development is designed to forestall faculty obsolescence, but determining how to provide for the developmental needs of a diverse faculty is problematic. At the University of Cincinnati a Faculty Development Program was organized around competitive proposals and university institutes. The developmental grant proposals were for individual faculty, groups of faculty, and departments and also provided funds for institutes for collaborative groups of faculty who had shared developmental needs and goals. More than 800 faculty members (42% of the total faculty) applied for these funds over a three-year period. Nearly 400 faculty were funded. The question remaining, following this initial cycle, was "Did this support for faculty development make a significant difference in the way learning, scholarship, and research was conducted?" To better ascertain the extent of the project's influence on the institution, a survey was distributed to all 1,925 faculty at the university - regardless of whether or not they received support. The returns of the survey were sufficient to allow for an analysis. The results held both anticipated results (e.g., upgraded skills and increased use of technology) and unexpected results (e.g., cooperation among faculty from diverse disciplines and multiplier effects on scope and nature of the projects). The results of the survey, regarding the Faculty Development Program's impact, clearly show that it has changed the way interdisciplinary faculty collaborate and it has significantly facilitated the ability of faculty to address specific developmental needs.