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Faculty Groups

Faculty Groups

The Faculty Development Program provides grants of $500 per year to support interdisciplinary groups of faculty who wish to meet on a regular basis to read and discuss scholarship of mutual interest and support one another's work. Funds are intended to pay for food, reading materials, and/or other relevant expenses. 

Proposals are accepted year round and can be submitted by emailing facultydevelopment@scu.edu. Groups should include faculty (and possibly staff) from multiple academic departments (discipline-specific groups should seek support from their departments). A brief survey must be completed at the end of the academic year indicating how the funds were used and how participation in the group influenced members.

Listed below are a number of faculty groups that provide opportunities for shared dialogue, support, and mentorship.

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Affinity Groups

Affinity Groups connect over a common purpose or interest with the goal of sharing diverse experiences and fostering inclusivity.

The Staff Senate also facilitates a number of affinity employee resource groups for both faculty and staff who self-identify. The list of groups can be found here.

The African American Faculty Network at SCU provides a welcoming space of support, networking, mentoring/co-mentoring and advocacy for all SCU faculty of African descent. Contact Faculty Development for more information.

Black/Pan-African faculty are also welcome to join the Black/Pan-African ERG (Employee Resource Group) at SCU, whose purpose is to foster community by providing a welcome space of support, networking, mentoring and advocacy for Black/Pan-African staff & faculty. Contact Marqus Koranteng for more info.

The AAPI Faculty Working Group is dedicated to providing a space for support, networking, and mentoring for faculty who self-identify as Asian/Pacific Islander American. In addition, we welcome faculty who are conducting research (broadly conceived) in the AAPI community. This group functions as both an affinity group and a study group-- meetings will comprise of social events and/or research talks. Please contact Vivien Leung at vleung@scu.edu.

The SCU Disabilities Network welcomes all faculty and staff with disabilities. The purpose of the network is to meet one to two times per quarter to empower group members, provide a space for mentoring/co-mentoring and advocacy, and facilitate a welcoming environment for faculty and staff with disabilities. Allies are welcome at policy-focused meetings. For more information, contact Laura Ellingson or Bill Stevens. 

The Jewish Faculty Group, facilitated by Akiba Lerner (Religious Studies), provides a network for faculty who are interested in matters related to Judaism, Jewish studies, and Jewish identity. Primary activities revolve around yearly gatherings for discussion over dinner. If you are interested and/or would like to be added to the email list, please contact Akiba Lerner at alerner@scu.edu.

Founded in 2007, the Latina/o Faculty Group was established to provide support and mentoring for Latina/o faculty in their professional careers and to foster a welcoming and friendly environment for Latina/o faculty on campus. It also serves as a resource for the university in its efforts to create a more diverse and inclusive community.

For more information, contact Ana María Pineda or Veronica Miranda.

 

SCU LGBTQ Faculty Group provides information, support and mentoring for LGBTQ Faculty. We also serve as a resource for the university in its efforts to create a more welcoming and inclusive community. Questions? Contact Sonja Mackenzie at smackenzie@scu.edu

If you are a retired or a retiring faculty member, there are many opportunities to connect! More information is available here.

Santa Clara University’s Women of Color Faculty Network welcomes all faculty of color who identify as women. This group is inclusive of all trans and non-binary faculty of color as well. The mission of the network is to empower and support faculty by building professional and personal connections across the campus. Contact Maggie Hunter for more information. The network is a collaborative effort of Faculty Development and the Women's and Gender Studies Program. 

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Study Groups

These groups are opportunities for faculty to explore a shared disciplinary interest or meet to advance their teaching and scholarly work.

The Applied Spirituality Institute (ASI) (formerly the Spirituality and Health Institute) is devoted to exploring the complex relationship between spirituality and well being from an interdisciplinary, multicultural perspective. Faculty, staff, and students from Santa Clara as well as other universities (e.g., Stanford, UC Berkeley, and the Graduate Theological Union) participate in a variety of collaborative research, teaching and outreach projects. The intention behind ASI is to bring creative, thoughtful and rigorous scholarly pursuit to better elucidate the relationship between spirituality and well being. Visit the group's webpage for more information.

The Bioethics Faculty Group is a multidisciplinary group interested in all things bioethics--from addiction to xenotransplantation.  We meet once or twice per quarter for lunch, cookies, and conversation.  If you're interested in bioethics, please join us. Contact Michelle Oberman at moberman@scu.edu for more information.

The Developmental Science Research Group connects faculty working on research and scholarship questions related to childhood development. We discuss our research questions and findings, and we share ideas for best practices in recruitment, community outreach, involving students in research, and finding external grant support. We also strive to identify new intersections of our work that could become fruitful places for collaboration. Contact Kirsten Read at kread@scu.edu for more information.

ECP research group involves and invites junior faculty whose work attends to Education and Counseling Psychology research and practices. We seek to create the space of solidarity as emerging scholar-educators from diverse identity backgrounds. We share the commitment to working toward justice through our work and partnership with teachers, counselors, and education leaders across k-12, higher education, and community settings. We meet weekly to have writing time and create opportunities for collaboration. We also have quarterly brown bag sessions to share ongoing research and methodological approaches, through which we explore the intersection and multiple perspectives of our work. Contact Won Jung Kim, wkim2@scu.edu, for more information.

The Indigenous Latin America Study Group focuses on the discussion and inquiry around aspects of Indigenous culture and influence in the region. Our group also welcomes links with faculty interested in Indigenous histories and discourses more generally. Contact Victor Quiroz and Gaby Greenlee for more information.

The Interdisciplinary tUrn: A Climate Crisis Research Group [CCRG] is a discussion group for faculty and staff that meets between October and April tUrn weeks. If you are wishing to deepen your informed commitments to climate action, climate conversations, climate research and solutions, please consider joining. We meet once in late Fall, three times in Winter, and once in Spring. Uniquely-themed sessions are co-facilitated by Chris Bacon, Zsea Bowmani, Leslie Gray, Carolyn Guggemos, Lindsey Kalkbrenner, Kristin Kusanovich, Ed Maurer, Chad Raphael, Katharine Rondthaler, Brian Thorstenson & Cara Uy-Segal. To sign up, please fill out this brief form. For more information, please contact the research group lead, Kristin Kusanovich, at turnproject@scu.edu.

The Political Theory Study Group was founded in 1988 and has been meeting about three times a quarter since.  We read books in political theory, understood broadly. Last year we read Thucydides. We are now reading J.S. Mill, and we will soon read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.  Readings and meeting times are decided by the participants. New participants are most welcome; contact Philip Kain for more information

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a systematic approach to collecting and analyzing data related to one's teaching practice and sharing that work with others. The SoTL Faculty Group meets several times per quarter to read, discuss, and analyze findings from SoTL research, as well as explore how to develop relevant SoTL research questions of their own; gather evidence; and share the results with other practitioners and members of the academic community. To learn more, check out the SOTL DRT page. For information on joining the SoTL faculty group, contact Jackie HendricksTim Urdan, or the Faculty Collaborative for Teaching Innovation.

We are a faculty group to provide statistics support and advice, and share the love of R, working together to expand our R skills. Feel free to email Brody Sandel (bsandel@scu.edu) with any questions.

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Leadership Groups

Faculty leaders gather to meet and share their experiences managing their teams, navigating through changes and challenges, and integrating SCU's mission into their work.

The Chairs Leadership Forum is a series of interactive, case-based sessions designed to support chairs as they develop leadership skills that reflect institutional values and knowledge of policies and practices at both the department and university level. Each session is grounded in the kinds of questions and scenarios that chairs actually face, with a focus on context--what works for Santa Clara University, the department, and the individual.