JANUARY 2025

Greetings faculty colleagues,

It’s hard to believe another semester is about to begin! We hope you are returning to work renewed, refreshed, and ready to take on what lies ahead for you this spring.  

Last month, the Office of Faculty Affairs reflected on the incredible work taking place on KU Lawrence and Edwards campuses during the vice provost and vice chancellor strategic alignment presentations. This month, we will continue learning about progress on our Jayhawks Rising initiatives when the deans share their updates. Eventually, strategic alignment presentations, including our Faculty Affairs presentation, will be made available on the strategic alignment website, but for now, I'd like to share a few numbers from our presentation that highlight some of our 2024-25 academic year: 

As January is National Mentoring Month, we’d like to highlight a timely initiative featured in both the Faculty Affairs and Graduate & Postdoctoral Affairs strategic alignment presentations. Over the past year, our offices have teamed up to develop, design, and deliver a comprehensive Graduate Student Mentorship Workshop that aligns with the university’s graduate student mentoring policy as well as national requirements, such as the NSF mentoring plan. The workshop focuses on four key foundations: 

So far, feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. 93% of respondents agree that they learned new knowledge, gained skills, and developed their mentoring capacity at the workshop, while 78% of respondents reported they will be implementing the tools presented at the workshop.  

If mentoring is a focus of yours this spring, consider joining one of our upcoming mentoring sessions – there are still a few sessions left! 

Finally, please don’t forget to nominate a faculty member for a university teaching award. Nominations are due by 5:00 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 2. The Office of Faculty Affairs manages a number of teaching awards for faculty at various career stages, with recipients recognized every fall during the University Teaching Awards ceremony. Please review these opportunities on our faculty awards page and nominate! 

With gratitude,

Amy Mendenhall 
Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs 
Professor, Social Welfare 

Faculty Finals Fest

We enjoyed seeing many of you on Dec. 3 and 4 during our annual Faculty Finals Fest! We shared great food, crafting, games, and door prizes to close out the academic year. See more photos of the event on our Instagram post. 

Policy and procedural guidelines and support from the Student Access Center 

As the spring semester gets underway, we want to remind you of helpful resources from the Student Access Center related to students with disabilities. Please visit the Instructor Center site for information on implementing academic accommodations, providing exam accommodations, recruiting a notetaker, and other topics. You can also find a sample syllabus statement, guidance on working with students with temporary injuries, as well as general rights and responsibilities of both students and faculty. The SAC homepage also includes an instructor portal, where instructors can log in to view and manage student accommodations. 

For questions about accommodations related to attendance and deadlines, detailed information can be found in the Disability-Related Absence section of the SAC website. It is important that the SAC and instructors communicate about accommodations, so a shared understanding can be made to the extent that the accommodation is reasonable in your specific course. This process involves finalizing an agreement form through the SAC online system to ensure that the student, instructor, and SAC are all on the same page. Anytime faculty have questions about this or any accommodation, the SAC is happy to consult with faculty individually or join a department meeting to answer questions about the process. 

The University and the United Academics of KU (UAKU) have met a few times this spring already and will continue to schedule future sessions. Recent tentative agreements reached at the end of the fall include: union rights, management rights, sabbatical, and appointments. In total, there have been 54 negotiating sessions, with 147 University proposals/counterproposals, 156 UAKU proposals/counterproposals, and 29 proposals with tentative agreements since collective bargaining began. Updates to spring negotiation sessions will be added to the Collective Bargaining Updates page as soon as they are available. Fall collective bargaining notes have been moved to the Fall 2025 Collective Bargaining Meeting Summaries page. 

Faculty "How to at KU": Supercharge your canvas course

Kick off the spring semester with a revamped Canvas course designed for enhanced student engagement and “supercharging” the learning experience! The Office of Faculty Affairs invites all faculty to join us for “Faculty How To at KU: Supercharge your Canvas course” this spring.

From those new to Canvas to our campus pros, there is always something to learn about optimizing the use of this tool. This event will be held virtually, so you can join us from anywhere!

Friday, January 9, from noon to 1:00 p.m.

Online via Zoom, registration required

Graduate Mentoring Workshop Series

The Graduate Mentoring Workshop is presented by the Office of Graduate Studies and the Office of Faculty Affairs. It is informed by the foundational elements of the Entering Mentoring Training provided by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER) and tailored to support our KU community. This training focuses on four key areas: setting and aligning expectations, effective communication with mentees, using Individual Development Plans (IDPs) in your mentoring practice, and supporting your mentees in developing resilience, self-efficacy, and independence.

All sessions present the same content. Please register for the date that best fits your schedule:

Thursday, January 15, from 11:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Friday, March 6, from 11:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

All sessions take place on the Lawrence campus; lunch is provided

Friday, Jan. 16: Spring 2026 New Faculty Orientation. Faculty with start dates in Spring 2026 or who were hired in Fall 2025 but did not attend Fall New Faculty Orientation are invited to participate in our virtual orientation.

Saturday, Jan. 25: Spotlight on Faculty Excellence: Subhrajit Saha

Saturday, Feb. 7: Spotlight on Faculty Excellence: Xinmai Yang

Tuesday, Feb. 10: Collaborative Research Luncheon: Data Science (Burge Union, Forum A). Collaborative Research Luncheons welcome faculty, across all ranks, across all schools, from the curious to the novice to the expert. Learn more about this and future luncheons on the Collaborative Research Luncheons website. 

Monday, Feb. 2: The Office of Faculty Affairs is accepting nominations for University Teaching Awards, including the Chancellors Club Teaching Awards and the university-wide excellence in teaching awards. View all teaching awards details and criteria at this link. 

Monday, March 2: The Office of Faculty Affairs is accepting nominations for the Keeler Family Intra-University Professorships and the Big 12 Faculty Fellowships. The Keeler program provides one semester free of departmental responsibilities to enable faculty to engage in substantive exchange and interaction with faculty members in another discipline that will result in the development or expansion of ongoing interdisciplinary research and teaching collaboration. The Big 12 Faculty Fellowship Program offers all tenured and tenure-track faculty the opportunity to travel to Big 12 member institutions to exchange ideas and research.

Monday, March 2: Faculty and academic staff of the University of Kansas are encouraged to submit applications for Sprints Week 2026, a five-day intensive collaboration with KU Libraries that enriches research and teaching projects and provides financial support - a $1,000 stipend - for selected participants. Applications are open now through March 2, with all applicants notified by the end of March. 

Jill Ellingson

Jill Ellingson, Director of Management & Entrepreneurship and Neeli Bendapudi Professor of Management at KU School of Business, was recently appointed to the U.S. State Department Board of Examiners for Foreign Service! 

Dates to be aware of and share with students

All dates above apply to full semester courses. Some deadlines may exclude certain schools and colleges. See the entire Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 calendar on the Registrar’s website.   

Suggested funding resource 

Faculty Insight contains the searchable Academic Analytics database of funding and awards opportunities, and also provides specific suggestions for funding and awards opportunities tailored to individual faculty members. 

To see a list of suggested funding opportunities, log in to Faculty Insight and click on the My Profile selection, then select Suggested Funding: 

How is Suggested Funding data curated?

Suggested funding opportunities can be saved by clicking the star in the column called "Save" to the right of the screen, and accessed in the faculty member name dropdown menu in the upper-right corner of the screen by selecting "Saved Funding".

To search the Academic Analytics database for funding or awards opportunities, click on the navigation menu option "Search", which is to the left of the My Profile option.  

AcA has some help topics in their user guide on selected funding. After clicking on the “Help” option in the navigation menu, select the Faculty Insight User Guide. Then see the section "Searching for Scholars, Funding, Honorific Awards and Collaborators."

The Office of the Chancellor recently announced finalist presentation dates for Provost/Chief Academic Officer for KU and Executive Vice Chancellor of the Lawrence campus. The campus-wide forums will take place between January 22 and February 4. Specific dates and details can be found on the Provost Search website.

Per the Syllabus Policy, all course syllabi must be posted in Simple Syllabus by the 10th day of classes.  The deadline for Spring 2026 is February 2, 2026.

While not required, faculty are encouraged to use the Simple Syllabus publisher tool to create their syllabi.  This tool allows faculty the freedom and support to include a variety of elements of their choosing, while also ensuring all required elements of the syllabus policy are addressed.  For assistance in using Simple Syllabus, including the publisher tool, please contact itedtech@ku.edu.

For faculty choosing to create their own syllabi to upload to Simple Syllabus, a full list of required elements is detailed in the policy. Administrators may request access to a Qualtrics syllabus audit tool that can be used to assess compliance.  Please contact Alyssa Maglone (alyssa.maglone@ku.edu) for more information. 

The Student Survey of Teaching will have a revised format this spring, based on recommendations from the SST Task Force findings. Changes include new and revised items, expanded response options, a unified survey design, added feedback on teaching assistants, and improved dashboard functionality. Read the details on these changes in a recent memo sent to all Lawrence/Edwards campus faculty and graduate teaching assistants. For questions on accessing your Student Surveys of Teaching, please email aire-help@ku.edu. 

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