Six Florida State University professors have been selected for the inaugural Faculty Fellows Program, an initiative aimed to draw on faculty members’ knowledge and expertise to create programs, policies and initiatives focused on increasing and supporting faculty success and research efforts.
Three of the faculty members are working with the Office of Faculty Development and Advancement and the other three are working with the Office of Research.
“The Faculty Fellows Program is a transformative project for the advancement of faculty and research achievement,” said Laurel Fulkerson, interim vice president for Research. “The diversity of expertise and experience among our fellows positions them to create meaningful work that will reach across departments and lead the way in higher education.”
The program will increase the pipeline of faculty members for leadership positions by providing opportunities to partner with university leaders on specific initiatives.
“We are excited to reaffirm our dedication and commitment to faculty advancement through our fellows program which will tackle policies and initiatives to support faculty interests,” said Janet Kistner, vice president for Faculty Development and Advancement.
The following professors were awarded one-year fellowships for the 2021–2022 academic year:
Office of Faculty Development and Advancement
Aimée Boutin, Professor of French, College of Arts & Sciences
Boutin’s project will begin in Fall 2021 and focuses on developing a comprehensive mentoring program for faculty based on a continuity of career model. Originally inspired by needing mentorship as a full professor, Boutin’s project will provide mentoring across career stages to develop continual growth throughout an academic career, focusing on enthusiasm, direction and accomplishment.
Shanna Daniels, Associate Professor of Management, College of Business
Daniels’ project will begin in Spring 2022 and focuses on strategies to increase the hiring, retention and advancement of underrepresented faculty. Specifically, Daniels will work to launch programs that focus on increasing demographic diversity, including race and ethnicity, gender and gender identity, socioeconomic status and disability status. The programs will also be focused on reducing bias and discrimination and creating a respectful work environment.
Lyndsay Jenkins, Associate Professor, Educational Psychology and Learning Systems, College of Education
Jenkins’ project will build a coordinated, comprehensive mentoring program that blends faculty support activities with mentoring. The program will be focused on teaching and student mentoring, research and funding and work-life balance. Participating faculty will complete development activities in each category, as well as have regular meetings with a mentor over a minimum two-year period. The project takes advantage of the existing support offered by FSU but adds the important aspect of mentoring.
Office of Research
Dawn Carr, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, College of Social Science and Public Policy
Carr will work to develop a framework for increasing interdisciplinary scholarship. Her goal is to develop infrastructure and an initial project to catalyze expertise in aging across the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy, the Claude Pepper Center and the Institute for Successful Longevity. She will be working with an advisory board, planning a multidisciplinary conference and developing a pilot project to test the proposed direction with a team of research experts. This will build a foundation for a large NIH research grant application and development of a larger program of research.
Eugenia Millender, Associate Professor, College of Nursing
Millender’s project aims to adopt a Shared Mental Model (SMM) by re-framing and re-orienting the conventional practice of creating a research team using harmonizing resources via the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program and the Office of Research. The model, SMM, will inform the team’s ability to maximize each member’s role in contributing to the delivery of fundable grant proposals. This allows the team to align action with shared values and adapt behaviors based on performance.
Iain Quinn, Associate Professor, College of Music
Quinn’s fellowship project draws faculty and students together from a wide range of departments to create a creative arts festival in fall 2022. The event will center on a broader vision of how the arts and the larger humanities are presented on campus. The festival will be an immersive arts experience that draws on strengths of individual departments and places complementary fields together collaboratively, such as a performance incorporating multiple arts including music, theatre, and dance that takes place in a building with related sculpture and photography.