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New Faculty Academy
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First Year Program for August 2024

The UTSA New Faculty Academy First Year Program begins as you transition to UTSA and San Antonio. It is required of all new faculty hired without tenure and open to all other full-time faculty who are new to UTSA (including tenured and fixed-term-track positions). Recently, UTSA was classified as a Carnegie R1 university in recognition of our achieving benchmarks amongst the top 145 public and private research in the United States. Commensurate with this designation has been our desire to further evolve and mature our research university culture and to continue to grow graduate education, particularly doctoral education, as well as post-doctoral opportunities.  Bold Beginnings at Roadrunner Nation orientation program is the first professional development opportunity that our new faculty have to prepare and support them as they begin their career at UTSA.

Objectives of the program are to:

  • create connections, learn about the mission/vision/values and culture as they relate to the destinations of UTSA
  • provide an introduction to UTSA’s teaching and research culture
  • identify people and services to support success
  • enhance skills related to research, instruction, and pedagogy
  • share information about institutional resources and best practices
  • promote collaboration and community in the first year

We will send an email with general information about the Bold Beginnings at Roadrunner Nation program in May. Then in late June, approximately one month before your anticipated arrival in early August, we will begin communicating with our new faculty on a weekly basis. Please advise us if the email address we have for you needs to be updated to ensure that you receive the weekly information. In subsequent messages, you will be sent a link to access the New Faculty Academy page in Canvas, UTSA’s Learning Management System.

Within Canvas, there are online modules to be completed prior to your attendance of Bold Beginnings at Roadrunner Nation on Monday August 1, 2024. They are:

  1. This is UTSA
  2. University Technology Solutions (UTS)
  3. Academic Innovation video
  4. Research at UTSA
  5. Roadrunner Portraits

There are other resource materials in the New Faculty Academy Canvas page that we encourage you to review. In addition, throughout the year you will be required to attend four (4) additional sessions that focus on teaching, research and other important topics. More information will be provided later.

To reach our aspirational levels of excellence, we will continue to advance how we mentor graduate, doctoral and post-doctoral trainees and support the development of faculty mentoring skills. As a new member of the UTSA Faculty Nation, we strive to provide you with tools and resources to contribute to your success, not only as a new faculty member, but also to further your career success. We have implemented complimentary university-wide mentoring programs. You can find information about these UTSA mentoring programs at the Faculty Mentoring Hub. As part of your welcome to UTSA each new faculty member will be a part of a peer mentoring team. The purpose of the Onboarding Peer Mentoring Team is to provide small groups of 3-5 new faculty in your college an opportunity to get to know faculty within your colleges and provide support as you transition to being a Roadrunner. You will have a college assigned Peer Mentor who is a current experienced faculty member at UTSA. Your Peer Mentor will support your group by facilitating conversations about how UTSA works, where to find resources/people, and getting you acquainted with the area.

The following sets of PMTs will be formed:

  • New early-career faculty will be assigned a Peer Mentoring Team within your college which will be mentored by another faculty member who has been at UTSA for several years.
  • New mid-career and full professor faculty are offered the opportunity to participate in a Peer Mentoring Team for tenured faculty to learn about UTSA guided by a professor level faculty member.
    • Please email norma.guerra@utsa.edu  by July 22nd to indicate your interest in participating 
  • New Department Chairs will be assigned a Peer Mentoring Team, which will focus on acquainting you with your new Chair role. This PMT will have an experienced department chair as Peer Mentor.

All of the Onboarding PMTs will be launched in August. Participants will receive an email with the names and contact emails for all of their PMT members. Peer Mentors for each team will be in touch to schedule initial meetings of the team. Teams will meet on a weekly or bi-monthly basis initially and then will adjust the frequency of the team meetings as the semester goes on. Teams will decide the modality of their own meetings (virtual, in person, mixed).

All of these programs provide support, opportunities to network, and a foundation of success at UTSA. Welcome! 

 

Questions? Contact Faculty Success at FacultySuccess@utsa.edu