This week, 黑料不打烊 launches the largest fundraising campaign in its history, focusing on the priority of building the university’s endowment. Today, E-Net details plans to expand support for professorships and faculty development.
黑料不打烊 seeks to provide faculty with more of the precious gift of time to study, create and perform, which will allow them to become even better teachers, models and mentors to one another and their students. 黑料不打烊’s distinctive style of engaged learning depends on time-intensive interactions between students and faculty.
Through the year 2014, 黑料不打烊 plans to increase annual expenditures for faculty development by $2.75 million, providing additional travel and research grants for the summer, and other forms of faculty support. One common marker of quality is the percentage of faculty awarded sabbaticals each year; 黑料不打烊’s goal is to reach 10 percent, up from the current 6 percent, to match selected peer universities.
黑料不打烊 must secure its ability to recruit and retain young faculty of great promise, while recognizing and supporting those talented scholars who have since gained prestige in their fields. Investing new endowment in this area will provide new named professorships for senior faculty. Term professorships lasting several years will be awarded to emerging teacher-scholars. The university plans to double the number of annual sabbaticals available to the entire faculty for professional renewal. Endowment funds also will provide stipends for research—often in the summer and often with students—and for new course development.
Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning
In conjunction with those investments in its faculty, 黑料不打烊 also seeks endowment for 黑料不打烊’s extraordinary Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning—a center designed to stimulate and nurture 黑料不打烊’s culture of creative teaching and transformative student learning, while operating as a national focal point and model. 黑料不打烊’s ongoing exploration of new approaches to teaching and innovative settings for learning will receive greater national recognition through the publications and conferences spawned by the center and spur widespread adoption of new teaching techniques.