This article highlights how academic leaders may inspire faculty professional growth, student success, and enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) opportunities through a broad operating framework for faculty learning communities (FLCs). While our focus was STEM, this approach is applicable to all liberal arts programs. Our college is primarily a teaching institution and faculty overwhelmingly indicate they are overcommitted, so there was much skepticism that FLCs could meet our two goals: result in productive faculty development and student success and enhance DEI initiatives.
Connections Are Everything: Putting Relationships at the Heart of Higher Ed
As academic leaders, we are under so much pressure to deliver—enrollment targets, strategic plans, graduation rates, AI policies, and on and on—that we can lose sight of what our students