Orienting New Faculty to Mission and Catholic Identity
Sacred Heart University
by Brian Stiltner, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Sacred Heart University has developed an effective set of programs for orientating new faculty to the mission and Catholic identity of the University. These programs are organized by the Center for Mission Education and Reflection (CMER). I am a faculty member who participated in these programs during my first year at Sacred Heart (1998-99) and who is now on the CMER faculty committee (several of whose members are Collegium alumni/ae), which coordinates them for each year's cohort of new faculty. In what is probably the dominant model at other colleges and universities, Sacred Heart's orientation programs center on faculty discussions. What we think is notable about our discussions is that they stretch out over the entire year, creating a community of conversation that keeps the issues before the minds of the faculty and disposes them to participate in and develop new activities to promote mission.
Most faculty programs on mission and identity are open-ended forums focused by previously distributed readings and sometimes led by a faculty panel or a guest speaker. In the current year, we are sponsoring six events for new faculty: three dinners spaced throughout the year, the last of which is with the University's president, Dr. Anthony Cernera, and three conversations exploring the relevance of mission and Catholic identity in the context of teaching, scholarship, and social service. (New faculty may also take advantage of additional forums for all faculty, other speakers, and roundtables sponsored by CMER throughout the year.) The orientation conversations include a number of the new faculty along with members of the CMER committee and other faculty members. Those faculty beyond the first year of employment serve as something like informal mentors in the conversations. Despite the busy schedules of faculty, we usually get at least half of the new faculty at any given program and involve a sizeable majority in the programming at some point in the year. All new faculty are invited, and experience shows that those who are not Catholic feel as welcome at these events as those who are Catholic.
Four characteristics typify the programs and their benefits for both the faculty and the University's mission. First, the programs encourage explicit awareness of the mission and identity of the University. Readings and presentations, including the stories of long-time faculty, describe the history of our university and what its Catholic identity has meant in different eras. A good deal of effort is given to explaining and exploring what is meant by "the Catholic intellectual tradition." Faculty who attend several of the programs are able to articulate by the end of the year the core ideas of this tradition-such as sacramentality, openness to all areas and methods of learning, and the promotion of human dignity and justice-as well as some ways these ideas are expressed in the activities of the University.
Second, the programs promote reflection on the relevance of mission and identity to faculty members' main responsibilities-teaching, scholarship, student interaction, and service to the community and university. The teaching session is typified by useful, vigorous conversation, since it is the pressing, dominant feature of new faculty members' lives. The conversation turns to such topics as academic freedom, the ethical responsibilities of faculty, teachers' influence on students' characters, and the exploration of the Catholic intellectual tradition across the curriculum. During the session on service, we highlight the extensive work our faculty and students do in service learning, which encourages many new faculty to explore this form of pedagogy. The session on scholarship explores, among other issues, the relationship between science and religion.
Third, the programs help establish faculty contacts across departments and ranks. As our university grows and diversifies, faculty highly esteem opportunities to meet colleagues outside their department. Mission programming is one of several venues in which such connections can occur, and it is a crucial one for maintaining a sense of community. The encouragement of cross-departmental networks facilitates collaborations relevant to mission and guards against the false notion that concern for mission and identity should be limited to one department, program, or committee.
Finally, flowing out of the last characteristic, the orientation programs can lead to new initiatives around mission. At a recent faculty orientation dinner at Sacred Heart, some of the conversation focused on recently expressed student concerns for the University to be more active in promoting ethnic diversity. The faculty discussed what they knew and did not know about the situation, how these issues might be dealt with in the classroom, and how they could better communicate with the students. Several faculty members began creating plans to promote forums for student-faculty conversation on diversity.
Because our orientation programs are marked by these characteristics, we believe they substantially advance the mission of the University. Because we succeed in engaging a majority of the new faculty, and because those who participate report that they enjoy and value the programming, we believe this model would be useful for new faculty at other Catholic universities. We think the orientation programs are successful for several reasons. Because the programs employ peer-led discussions, the new faculty feel they can speak candidly and find a sympathetic hearing as they grapple with their new responsibilities. By creating a relaxed setting, especially at meals, the programs entice new faculty to attend for the camaraderie and for the chance to air among colleagues their questions and concerns about their new positions. At the same time, the programs benefit from the fact that they receive high-level administrative support, typified, for example, by the opportunity to have dinner with the University's president. This event communicates to new faculty members that their experiences and concerns are taken seriously by the administration. We also believe the programs are successful because they are spaced throughout the academic year, with neither so many events that the scheduling becomes overwhelming and the discussions repetitive, nor so few events that the conversation among the new faculty cohort withers. Three orientation events per semester seem about right to us.
As this year is only the second for our new faculty orientation program, it is obvious that we will continue to modify the program based on its successes and shortcomings. Though on the whole we are pleased with how it has been working, we some challenges, ones that are not unique to our university. So I conclude with three brief reflections on these questions. The first is the perennial issue of how to involve everyone. While we have good turnout for these programs, busy schedules and time-conflicts always prevent some from attending who would otherwise like to. The difficulties will only increase as our university grows. Beyond the mere fact of time conflicts, we hope that all new faculty would take the opportunity to join a few conversations to see how they like them. Yet outside of perhaps an initial job-related orientation (where information on mission is provided), it seems wise only to invite and encourage attendance, not to force it. But then there will always be some who miss out. How much should that concern us?
Second, what are the best ways to act upon the conversation? There is often the tendency in discussion-oriented programming for everyone to talk and be stimulated by the discussion, and then to put the conversation on hold until the next organized event. Informal initiatives can arise out of the conversations, such as the example I gave above concerning diversity. But a university would do well to think about how to move formally and effectively from conversation into application. Some examples of Sacred Heart's applications into teaching, scholarship, and service are: support for established campus programs such as Service Learning, the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding, and the Hersher Institute for Applied Ethics; the establishment of Catholic Intellectual Tradition grants for teaching and research projects; the publishing of books treating Catholic thought; conference planning; and the undertaking of a core curriculum revision. Such activities will involve a broad base of faculty only insofar as those faculty are already concerned to advance the University's mission, and that will be the case only insofar as campus conversations have nurtured a true community. Another t of application that suggests itself in the Sacred Heart programs, but which we have not explored or undertaken in a formal way, is mentoring junior faculty. It would be worth exploring what mentoring for mission might mean and look like, and how it could be related to an overall process of mentoring faculty into their careers.
Lastly, such programs around mission can be partly victimized by their own success, if some faculty perceive that this dimension of university life receives too much focus. Since Catholic identity is often described as the yeast in the dough of the university's life, some members of the institution can get a little put off to find the yeast everywhere. This is not to suggest that programming around mission should be restricted, but it is simply to point out a nerve that can get irritated. From our experience it seems that this will be less of a problem if, through an effective orientation process and other initiatives, faculty come to "own" the discussion of the University's mission and see it as everyone's responsibility-and everyone's opportunity.
Previous Page
Back to CMER Programs and Events