Faculty First Week

Page Content

Southern Miss GRIT: Growth, Resilience, Inclusion, Transformation

Pre-Conference August 14 – 15, 2023
August 16 – 18, 2023

The Office of the Provost and the Center for Faculty Development invite faculty and staff to submit proposals for Faculty First Week 2023. This year’s Faculty First Week will include pre-conference intensive sessions on August 14-15 with full conference programming on August 16-18. For the fifth year, Faculty First Week provides time for colleges and schools to meet, engage with campus resources, and learn from one another’s expertise as we prepare for the academic year ahead.

The 2023 Faculty First week centers on cultivating a sense of belonging and purpose and encouraging inclusivity and growth as we work together. As you think about what programming you would like to attend, or what you would like to present or lead, consider these questions:

• How does your work at USM prompt growth, resilience, inclusion and/or transformation?
• What tools, strategies, or approaches ignite growth in your classroom, in your programs or in your collaboration with colleagues?
• How do you engage students in transformational learning or research experiences?
• How do you promote a growth mindset to help students envision their future success in your course, in their research/scholarship, and in their career goals?
• What tools, strategies, or approaches foster belonging in your classroom, research lab, or service?
• How have you seen our students persist and transform in the recent learning environments at USM?
• What resources support students’ individual needs and pursuit of education at USM?

Proposals for professional development workshops, presentations, or coffee chats can address the topics in the broad categories of pedagogy, technology and/or service in relation to the theme of Southern Miss GRIT: Growth, Resilience, Inclusion, Transformation. For instance:

• Pedagogy presentations might explore inclusive teaching practices, strategies to help students persist, culturally responsive teaching in diverse formats, building relevant course content, connecting career guidance in the classroom, building classroom community, connecting across disciplines and units in robust experiences, supporting students inside and outside of the classroom, and other topics that will inspire enjoyable teaching and mentorship.
• Technology presentations might demonstrate tips and tricks you have used in Canvas to support the online classroom community, strategies for how to incorporate interactive and/or adaptive tools in the classroom, strategies for igniting innovative approaches to research with technology support, and other topics that share ways technology can enhance our teaching and research practices through the lens of inclusion.
• Service presentations might introduce faculty to university committees and processes that connect to the institution’s shared governance, approaches to unexpected service opportunities, prospects for engaging the community, research funding, ways to lead effective meetings, mentoring new faculty, and other strategies for contributing to the university and the community.

Sessions will be 45 minutes and proposals should be crafted with the expectation of that time frame. Colleagues may work together to propose a session with multiple presenters, or one person can propose a session that will be for the full time. Note that Faculty First Week will be an in-person event on the Hattiesburg campus with select sessions offered in a hybrid format.

Submission Guidelines

Faculty and staff should submit proposals by 5:00pm on May 8, 2023, through this portal. As the form indicates, proposals must include information on the presenter(s).  Proposals will include a title, an abstract summarizing the presentation (300-word limit), narrative on connection to FFW’s theme, and a brief two sentence description for inclusion in the program if the submission is selected for Faculty First Week.

All faculty who submits a proposal will be notified by June 5, 2023, whether their submission will be included in the 2023 Faculty First Week.

If you have a suggestion for a workshop for FFW, submit it through this link.

Questions? Please email kelly.lesterFREEMississippi.

Submit a proposal