Dean's Welcome: Senior Associate Dean Claudia Benitez-Nelson
Introductions: CAS Academic Leadership
Faculty Panel: "Everything I Wish I'd Known in My First Year"
Panelists:
Monica Barra (Assistant Professor, School of Earth, Ocean and Environment and Department of Anthropology)
Besim Dragovic (Assistant Professor, School of Earth, Ocean and Environment)
Sayward Harrison (Assistant Professor, Psychology)
Hannah Rule (Associate Professor, English Language and Literature)
Kelly Wolf (Professional Faculty, Film and Media Studies)
Moderator: Claudia Benitez-Nelson (Senior Associate Dean for College Initiatives and Interdisciplinary Programs)

As a new faculty member, do you have questions about what resources are available to support your teaching in the College?  Do you wish you knew more about academic advising, experiential learning, and other opportunities available to your undergraduate students?  We’re here to help!  Join us for a panel discussion featuring experts from the CAS Office of Undergraduate Studies, University Libraries, and Center for Integrative and Experiential Learning.  You’ll hear a brief overview of what each of these services has to offer, followed by informal discussion and Q&A.

Panelists:

Christy Friend (Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, College of Arts and Sciences)

Nora Dragovic (Advising Liaison and Director of Students, College of Arts and Sciences)

Sharon Verba (Head of Research and Instruction, University Libraries)

Charlie Pierce (Faculty Executive Director, Center for Integrative and Experiential Learning)

We often hear that having a mentor is important. But rather than having one mentor on which you rely for everything, we benefit more from thinking of mentorship as a village – as cultivating a network of different people with different expertise, experiences, and positionalities that can provide focused, just-in-time guidance on all facets of our (professional) lives. In this session, participants will hear from Qiana Whitted, Professor of English and African american Studies, and Claudia Benitez-Nelson, Senior Associate Dean for College Initiatives and Interdisciplinary Programs, who will share experiences and guidance on initiating mentorship relationships. Participants will also work with a mentorship network map to take account of those mentors already identified as resources, as well as discover - and work to fill in - those mentoring areas where support lacks. 

A major part of our responsibilities as faculty is to mentor graduate and/or undergraduate students in work outside the classroom, especially as they undertake research or other independent study or perform teaching or assistant responsibilities in labs or recitations. A positive mentoring experience can be mutually beneficial for faculty and student, but what does such a reciprocal relationship look like and how can we adapt our approaches to meet various student needs and abilities? In this workshop, Professor Mike Matthews, who is a facilitator in the “Entering Mentoring” program here at USC, will discuss some proven best practices from that program., as well as some of his personal experiences and observations with mentoring students. 

Do you ever show up to your office saying, “What am I going to work on today?”  You have many goals - submit that article or proposal or finally grade that stack of essays - but what you may not have are the detailed plans needed to realize those goals. It’s easy to push complex tasks off your plate simply because you don’t know where or how to start (and never starting just perpetuates worry and avoidance).  This meeting will focus on how to portion the time you have, planning out your semester by week, day, even to the hour, to meet your goals by breaking them into smaller manageable pieces. Implementing this planning process will help increase your productivity, avoid distractions, and create sustainable work habits that can minimize burnout and increase work-life balance.  Bring to this session your laptop or paper, your calendar, and your goals (in mind), as we’ll spend the session mapping out plans for a balanced and productive spring semester.    

This session will be dedicated to building a relationship between the facilitators and the participants in order to find the best plan of action for future sessions. The facilitators will briefly review the topics that may be covered in the future and provide a needs assessment to discover what the participants level of interest may be for each promotion-related topic, such as finding meaning after tenure, navigating service mid-career, and planning your path to promotion. This session will take place in Gambrell, and lunch will be provided. 

In this session, we will consider different aspects of planning a path toward promotion. The role of timelines, mentorship, self-assessment, and tracking progress will be discussed.on.

In this session, we will consider how to set, achieve, and sustain individual research goals. The importance of balancing the need for research goals alongside teaching and service commitments will be addressed.

In this session, we will consider how to link professional accomplishments to one's Unit Criteria for Promotion to Full Professor. Effectively building a personal statement that communicates how one's record aligns with criteria will be discussed.