FAQs: Faculty Success Program

The National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity is a nationally-recognized, independent organization that provides online career development and mentoring resources for faculty, post-docs, and graduate students. Learn more about the NCFDD here.

To activate your Personal Membership to NCFDD, complete the following steps:

1. Go to Join NCFDD
2. Select the “Become a Member” tab and choose “Claim Your Institutional Membership.”
3. From the drop-down menu choose “Boise State University.”
4. Follow instructions to complete the registration form using your Boise State email address.
5. Once you have submitted your registration information and NCFDD has approved your connection to Boise State, you should receive a welcome email.

If you have any technical questions, please email NCFDD at Membership@FacultyDiversity.org.

The signature program of the NCFDD, the Faculty Success Program is a 12-week intensive mentoring experience offered online and designed to help tenured and tenure-track faculty members increase scholarly productivity, manage time effectively, and maximize work-life balance. In this program, faculty participants work directly with experienced faculty coaches and a small group of peer faculty to explore and implement concrete skills and strategies to achieve their scholarly and professional goals. Learn more about the Faculty Success Program.

Participants come to the Faculty Success Program for many different reasons, including: to jump-start new scholarly or research projects, to find more efficient and effective ways to engage in existing scholarly work, and to take their research and scholarship productivity to the next level. The program is especially well-suited for faculty who would benefit from coaching and accountability partners outside of their own institutions. Here’s the bottom link, according to NCFDD: if you …

1. didn’t accomplish your writing goals this semester,
2. are walking into the new term feeling disappointed, frustrated, exhausted, and panicked that time is flying by without manuscripts leaving your desk, and/or,
3. can’t afford to have another semester go by without significant progress on your writing projects…

… then consider joining them.

Check out the Faculty Success Program FAQ page for more details about how you might benefit.

The NCFDD explains that participants in the program will be expected to:

• Be self-directed and responsible adult learners who are open to feedback
• Regularly review the weekly trainings in the online community
•  Attend and actively participate in your Small Group Support and Accountability Calls
• Complete the weekly homework assignments guided and supported by your Small Group Coach
• Track your daily progress on Writing, Research, and Personal Goals in our private online community

Additionally, as part of its sponsorship for faculty participation in the program, SLU asks selected participants to prepare a brief report about their experience and to be willing to share their experience with other SLU faculty. Additionally, past participants of the program may be asked to serve on a future selection committee.

While the program will require specific commitments each week (such as short training modules and small group calls), much of the work completed in the program is on your own research or scholarship. The program aims to provide you with skills and strategies to approach your existing workload in new ways. To give you an idea about how the program might fit into your schedule, download this PDF sample schedule of a typical FSP participant or review the sample schedule on this page.

• Sunday: spend a little time creating a weekly plan
• Monday: Write for 30 minutes before the daily Write-Now check-in in the morning; teach for the morning then watch a weekly training module before finishing up teaching and office hours in the afternoon
• Tuesday: Write for 30 minutes before the daily Write-Now check-in in the morning before completing service hours
• Wednesday: Write for 30 minutes before the daily Write-Now check-in in the morning; teach in the morning then participate in the small group accountability call from 12:00-1:15
• Thursday: Write for 30 minutes before the daily Write-Now check-in in the morning before having your FSP individual coaching session; office hours, then mentor meeting with Dr. Brown in the afternoon.
• Friday: Write for 30 minutes before the daily Write-Now check-in in the morning then teach morning classes
• Saturday: Take the weekend off!