Pitt expands leadership program Academic Impressions to all faculty and staff | University Times

By SUSAN JONES

Pitt has partnered with an online program, Academic Impressions, to bring higher ed leadership skills to faculty and staff, and John Wallace, vice provost for faculty advancement and leadership development, hopes this leads to more in-person training on campus.

Wallace said Academic Impressions, the nation’s largest provider of leadership development for higher ed, pushes the idea that “their emphasis is on building capacity, not dependency. So the emphasis is on equipping the individual institutions to build their own leadership development programming.”

For now, the training is all online, and is open to faculty and staff. Find instructions for how to start your membership on the Faculty Advancement and Leadership Development website.

The first Pitt open house event about the benefits of Academic Impressions membership was held online on Oct. 16, and Wallace said they plan to have more of these.

Some of the programs available right now include:

Supervision Certificate Program: One cohort started Oct. 6, but another will begin on Nov. 3. The four-week program uses both asynchronous and synchronous learning specifically designed for higher education supervisors who are new to their roles, looking to deepen their skills, or for those who aspire to supervisor roles.

Knowing Yourself as a Leader: The online article is followed by a reflective tool to apply what you’ve learned.

Developing Leadership Skills in Your Early Career: The six discussion series sessions are designed to help you begin to develop a sense of who you are as a leader and what specific skills you need to grow. They were previously recorded and can be accessed at any time.

Embrace Your Leadership: The Balancing Acts of Academic Leadership: This 42-minute course is designed for current or aspiring department chairs, heads and program directors.

What Does Cohesion Feel Like? Improving Team Dynamics for Optimal Success: This program is for deans, directors, VPs, etc., who are curious about how Academic Impressions can help to optimize the engagement, retention and performance of their teams.

Impact on faculty

Because of his role at Pitt, Wallace is focused mostly on how this program can benefit faculty.

“As we build and develop our faculty, we, of course, then strengthen the institution,” he said. “… by investing in the faculty, we increase their ability to serve our students, but also grow them as individuals and as professionals.”

Wallace’s office is working with Academic Impressions to curate the large volume of content into different subgroups — early career, mid-career or senior level faculty, along with pathways for department chairs and deans.

At each level, Wallace said, there are different challenges in adapting to new roles, and that’s where this new program can help.

“Of course, we have a lot of experience as individual faculty members, but having that outside knowledge and the expertise from folks who this is their primary research as well as intervention is hugely important,” he said. “They come alongside us and provide us tools and insight and understanding, coupled with the decades of experience and expertise that we’ve built up in the institution.

“Ultimately, we want to retain our faculty. The provost’s priority is that Pitt be an excellent place, not just for our students and our staff, but also for the faculty, (who are) the cornerstone, in many ways, of a research one university.”

Wallace said there is a 6% to 7% faculty turnover rate each year. And although there are a variety of reasons faculty leave, “every percentage that you retain is still a significant investment.”

Some faculty are just a mismatch for Pitt and others leave for better opportunities. Wallace said the goal with the latter group is that they become “evangelists” for Pitt, and “they’re sending their graduate students here, they continue to collaborate with their colleagues and friends here, and they have fond memories, and Pitt really was the platform for them to be able to continue their career somewhere else.”

But, he said, “what really hurts is when something happens, either because of the environment, the context, or something that where a person who could have or should have thrived here does not.”

He said part of the work of his office “is understanding why do faculty leave, and making sure that if they leave, it’s not because there’s something that we didn’t do, or our failure to develop and grow and nurture them as scholars and recognize that people are more than their research.”

He hopes that the Academic Impressions program will help in that development.

“If you think about it, the average faculty member has not had explicit training in leadership, and so much of the work is on the job and you’re trying to figure it out,” he said. “That’s why the partnership with Academic Impressions make so much sense.”

Wallace is now interim chair of the Department of Africana Studies, and he said he can see how this program could help him.

“That certainly has opened my eyes to that role, the importance of department chairs, because they’re really that kind of middle managers, if you will, between the deans and the faculty themselves,” he said. “And that role often turns over … fairly quickly. Developing the chairs and the associate deans in particular, as leaders, is hugely important.

“In many ways, we saw this as an opportunity to accelerate the work that (Office of Faculty Advancement and Leadership Development) has been assigned to do. … To have an organization that focuses explicitly on these issues, to come alongside us as we’re building our own programming has been extremely helpful.”

Wallace said this is the first year of a multi-year engagement with Academic Impressions.

“This year is the marketing and curating the online content, and then we’re also working with them to design Pitt-specific content, particularly focused on leadership development as an addition to our faculty advancement work,” he said.

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at [email protected] or 724-244-4042.

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