Greetings faculty colleagues,

The beginning of the fall semester brings an undeniable excitement. New students join our campuses, fall programs and events begin, and we recommit to building a community that fosters the well-being of all Jayhawks. This fall, we look forward to working with our campus community, including the new faculty and academic staff union, United Academics of KU, as we focus on current and new priorities. To this end, the Office of Faculty Affairs has some updates and initiatives taking shape this fall that I would like to share with you. 

The Lawrence and Edwards campuses will be welcoming more than 100 new faculty this fall, and our office is hard at work designing the 2024 New Faculty Orientation, which will take place on Monday, August 19th at the Jayhawk Welcome Center. If you have a new faculty member joining your department, please be sure to remind them about this day-long program which helps acclimate faculty to their role at KU. If you know of someone who has not yet RSVP’d and they would still like to, please share this registration link with them. In addition to New Faculty Orientation, for the first time this fall we will also offer a “coffee & campus tour” experience for our new faculty on Tuesday morning, August 20th, in order to help foster important connections and learn about our Lawrence campus and its history. 

Additionally, Faculty Affairs is excited to expand our recognition and policy capacities as we launch a search for an Associate Vice Provost for faculty policy and recognition. This position will take on a leadership role in developing new policies, streamlining review processes, and providing educational programming on faculty-related policy. The person in this role will also develop and promote faculty recognition initiatives and coordinate university-level faculty award committees. Watch for an email from our office during the week prior to the start of classes, which will include the position description and more details. Please consider submitting an application or encouraging someone you know to apply. 

As we look forward to the semester ahead, we sharpen our focus on the university’s goals of creating an environment of fairness, respect, and belonging; supporting opportunities for local and global engagement; partnering with campus units to ensure faculty wellness; and expanding on our work of celebrating and valuing our talented faculty, all in an effort to ensure stewardship of this institution. We look forward to connecting with you this fall in various ways to meet these initiatives. 

Amy Mendenhall 
Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs  
Professor, School of Social Welfare  

About the Program

The Summer Disbursement program reserves a portion of after-tax pay from every full pay period during the academic year and then evenly disburses those funds to the participating faculty member during the summer. The program affects individual’s net pay each payroll period, but does not impact their gross pay, retirement contributions, benefits, tax withholdings or W2. The university and participating faculty members will continue to pre-pay summer State Employee Health Plan and optional group life insurance premiums during the spring semester.

Who is Eligible?

The program is open to all academic year faculty, tenured and tenure-track faculty, and lecturers hired for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Enrollment in the Faculty Academic Year Pay Reserve for Summer Disbursement program for the 2024-25 academic year is available now and eligible faculty members can enroll in the program at HR AY Reserve until 5 p.m. on August 23. If you participated last year and want to participate this coming academic year, you must sign up again.

After submitting the enrollment form, you will receive a confirmation email. When the deduction has been entered into HR/Pay in late August, you will receive another confirmation email from the Payroll Office. Read more about the program at this link.

New Faculty Foundations 1.0 are designed with first-year faculty in mind, but are open to all faculty within their first several years at KU, with relevant topics geared towards all New Faculty experiences.

HR: Benefits: What you Need to Know to Get Started
Wednesday, Sept. 11 from 2:30-2:45 p.m.
Kansas Memorial Union, Pine Room


On the Front Lines: Connecting Students with Resources and Support at KU
Tuesday, Oct. 10 from 3-4:15 p.m.
Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center Classroom 

New Faculty Foundations 2.0 are designed with second-year faculty in mind, but are open to all faculty within their first several years, with relevant topics geared towards all New Faculty experiences.

Mentoring 101: Developing your own Mentor Network
Thursday, Sept. 26 from 3-4:15 p.m.
Watson Library, 3 West Event Space


Mentoring 101: Best Practices in Graduate Student Mentoring
Wednesday, Oct. 30 from 2:30-3:45 p.m.
Kansas Memorial Union, English Room

Student Affairs welcomes faculty and staff volunteers to participate in a number of in-person welcome events that take place throughout the month of August. Be a part of our Jayhawk welcome committee! 

Find the complete list of opportunities and sign up at this website. 

The Bales Choral Society is a new KU faculty and staff choir that will rehearse along with the Bales Chorale weekly on Mondays from 6-8:30 p.m. during the fall and spring semesters. Performances will take place in the Bales Recital Hall, located on the Northwest side of the Lied Center on West Campus (Lawrence).

Brief singing interviews are required and take place August 19-22 and 26-28. For more information and a link to interview, please follow this link.

Join CTE for the annual Teaching Summit on August 22. The theme of this year’s conference is Building Trust, Centering Belonging: Fostering Learning for All. 

Register online for the Summit and/or the AI afternoon session by August 15. When you register, indicate whether you plan to stay for lunch. 

The university-wide reaffirmation of accreditation review by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) every 10 years, provides an important opportunity for us to demonstrate all of the ways that commitment brings us closer to achieving our shared vision as an exceptional learning community. A mock site review will take place on September 9-10 in preparation for the HLC site visit in March. The HLC 2025 website will be updated in the coming weeks to further explain the accreditation review process and why it is important to all KU community members. 

Fall is almost here, and as the count-down begins to the official launch of the new semester you may be focused on how to best wrap up your summer projects. Needing some last-minute motivation? Recently NCFDD offered a weekly challenge to help keep our spirits high and our keyboards tapping. Their advice included:

To join the NCFDD community, be sure to sign up here.  Your membership is free through KU’s institutional membership, which is co-sponsored by the Office of Faculty Affairs and Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. While you are on their website, check out their other offerings – such as how to develop a daily writing practice, mastering academic time management, and overcoming academic procrastination – all of which are created to help support your journey to success! 

AAI Arts & Humanities Grant

The Achievement & Assessment Institute (AAI) is pleased to announce our Arts & Humanities Grant, now in its fourth year, is accepting proposals. The purpose of the grant program is to foster deeper ties between the arts and humanities and the education and social sciences within which most of AAI’s work is focused.

Any tenure track faculty, teaching professor, or multiterm lecturer in a department considered by KU to be in the arts or humanities is eligible. Certain unclassified academic staff (library or museum, for example) may also be eligible. Learn more about the grant and apply at this link.

The Office of Faculty Affairs congratulates Patricia Weems Gaston on recently serving as a 2024 Pulitzer Prize juror as a part of the International Reporting Jury! The Pulitzer Prize is regarded as the top honor in journalism, literary achievement, and musical composition.

Read more about this and other career accomplishments of Weems Gaston at this link.

The Office of Faculty Affairs would like to congratulate five outstanding educators on being recognized as this year's William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence awardees.

Read the full story at this link and click the images at right to see our Instagram features.

Robin Lehman, Director of Faculty Recognition & Awards

KU faculty researchers have had an impressive record of success garnering Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards granted by the National Science Foundation. Junior faculty selected for the award, have demonstrated the potential to serve as teacher-scholar role models who can integrate research and education within the context of their departments’ mission. 

Read more on this year's CAREER award recipients and ways in which you can partner with KU's Office of Faculty Recognition & Awards on identifying pathways to external recognition opportunities.

Distribution Schedules

AIRE has developed a SharePoint site where you can check when your class surveys are being distributed and when they officially close. Check your distribution schedule here.

Checking Response Rates

Instructors can view live survey response rates. Please familiarize yourself with this feature and check your response rates periodically throughout the survey period. Note that response rates do not appear for a course until the first student survey for that course is submitted. Click here for your response rates page.

Support

If you experience report access issues, or do not find the data you expect to see, please contact aire-help@ku.edu with the details. Full documentation on Student Surveys of Teaching is available at https://aire.ku.edu/course-surveys-qualtrics.

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