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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 Inclusive Excellence Division also facilitates a number of employee resource groups for both faculty and staff. The list of groups can be found here




The African American Faculty Network at SCU provides a welcoming space for all SCU faculty in supporting, networking, mentoring/co-mentoring, and advocacy. Contact Faculty Development for more information. All faculty are also welcome to join the Black/Pan-African ERG (Employee Resource Group) at SCU, whose purpose is supporting and celebrating Black/Pan-African heritage, culture, and communities. Contact Marqus Koranteng for more info.

The AAPI Faculty Working Group provides a space for support, networking, and mentoring for all faculty interested in or otherwise connected to 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 Disabilities and Chronic Illness Network provides a welcoming space for SCU faculty and staff to support and celebrate people with disabilities. The network meets one to two times per quarter to empower members, provide a space for mentoring/co-mentoring and support, and foster a more accessible and inclusive SCU community. For more information, please contact one of our co-facilitators: Noel Kriedler (skreidler@scu.edu), Laura Ellingson (lellingson@scu.edu), or Bill Stevens (wstevens@scu.edu).

The Jewish Faculty Group, facilitated by Akiba Lerner (Religious Studies), provides a network for all 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 Latine Faculty Group serves as a resource for the university in its efforts to create a more diverse and inclusive community for all faculty. Latine is used as a gender-inclusive term to describe people of Latin American origin or descent who identify as cisgender male or female, intersex, nonbinary, gender fluid, or transgender. In specific instances, we use gendered terms (e.g., Latina, Latino) when gender identity is known. We acknowledge that other Spanish- and Portuguese-descendent colleagues might identify with the term “Hispanic”. All faculty are welcome to join this faculty group. 

For more information, contact Ana Maria Pineda, Allan Báez Morales, or Pearl Barros.

SCU LGBTQ Faculty Group provides information, support and mentoring for all faculty and serves 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.




The Retired and Retiring Faculty Group provides all faculty opportunities to connect and to learn more about retirement and life thereafter! More information is available here.




The mission of the Women and Nonbinary Faculty of Color Network is to empower and support women and nonbinary faculty and academic librarians of color by creating opportunities for building professional and personal connections across campus. We cultivate community through on-campus events, off-campus activities, and peer mentoring. All faculty are welcome to join this faculty group. Contact Maggie Hunter or Sharmila Lodhia for more information. The network is a collaborative effort of Faculty Development and the Gender and Sexuality Studies Department.

This group is open to all faculty and their close family to support community-building and connection at SCU and in the Bay Area. It includes both tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty. Activities include happy hours, standing lunches, attendance at SCU sporting events etc. There will be a standing lunch from 11:45 -12:30 every Wednesday, and the group tries to meet at least once a quarter for a happy hour. Please contact Ewan Kingston for more information. 

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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.