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Dear Colleagues, 

I hope you are enjoying the fall semester. Most of you are busy with students and research projects as well as providing service to the University. The semester is moving along at a fast pace with many events taking place on our campus, as you can see below. We also want to share with you the Provost Office priorities for this academic year:

• Create programming around building community
• Increase support for faculty with research development and productivity
• Support faculty facing AI challenges in their courses and scholarly pursuits
• Increase career readiness initiatives for our students 
• Achieve a successful Carnegie Foundation Elective Community Engagement reclassification 
• Create a process for developing interdisciplinary programs
• Assess block tuition and students success

Faculty Panel: Democracy, Civil Engagement, and the 2024 Elections
Wednesday, October 16, 4-5:30 pm, 1st Floor of the Mardigian Library

Please join us for a discussion on Democracy, Civil Engagement, and the 2024 elections! We will hear from your colleagues across the colleges about issues facing our nation and the upcoming election. Presenters include Pamela Aronson (Professor of Sociology), Julio Borquez (Associate Professor of Political Science), Tim Kiska (Professor of Communications), Hafiz Malik  (Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering), and Lisa Martin (Department Chair / Professor of Health and Human Services & Women's and Gender Studies). We hope to see you there!

Faculty and Staff Training For Student Mental Health
As part of our ongoing commitment to fostering a supportive and inclusive campus environment, the Office of Counseling and Psychological Services is pleased to announce a second date for their new training focused on Supporting Students’ Mental Health. This training is designed to equip you with the tools and strategies needed to recognize, respond to, and support students who may be facing mental health challenges. With increasing demands on our students’ emotional and psychological well-being, it’s important for us as educators and staff to be well-prepared to offer compassionate and effective assistance.

Training Details
Date: Monday, November 4th, 2024
Time: 2-4 pm
Location: RUC 1225

This training will be offered several times throughout the year and thus are limiting sign up to 25 individuals to provide space for quality interactions. Your role in promoting mental well-being is crucial, and we believe this training will provide valuable insights and practical approaches for ensuring our students thrive academically and personally. Please RSVP by completing our . If you have any questions or require additional information, feel free to reach out.

Hub Panel on GenAI and Writing Classes
For those who missed the Hub’s informative faculty panel last week Reckoning with AI Writing in the Wake of Pandemic Teaching, this will catch you up. Thank you to the fantastic faculty panelists Jennifer Coon, John Taylor, Mike MacDonald, and Shelly Jarenski and to the Hub for creating much needed space for these conversations. If the panel (or blog) raises any questions or ideas for you, you can . The Hub instructional designers have been following the impacts of GenAI on university teaching very closely and can assist you in thinking through this complex teaching issue, providing you with outside resources, and redesigning assignments and assessments to best meet your learning goals.

Hanover Research Reports for New and Existing Academic Programs
The Provost’s Office in partnership with Business Affairs has renewed our contract with for another 3 years. Hanover provides all of our colleges and programs with the opportunity for a detailed analysis of critical elements of new and existing academic program viability (student demand, labor market demand, and market saturation). As a reminder, all new program proposals are required to have a Hanover report included when going through the curriculum approval process. To schedule a scoping call with Hanover for research analysis, reach out to Associate Provost Linker: [email protected] to be added to the Hanover queue. Following scoping calls reports generally take six weeks to complete. 

Arts Initiative
Thank you to the faculty members in the arts who attended a meeting facilitated by the Provost’s Office to connect our campus with the leadership team at Ann Arbor’s . The Arts Initiative aims to expand access to the arts on all three campuses and there are funding opportunities available to Dearborn faculty. Some of these opportunities have October deadlines, so there's still time to apply. Additionally, please share with your students this call for student artwork for a three-campus juried exhibition with the theme Take Care. 

EIC Sustainability Fellows
The Environmental Interpretive Center (EIC), along with the Office of the Provost, recently launched a new student initiative to support interdisciplinary collaborations on sustainability. Four EIC Collegiate Sustainability Fellows were selected, with each student representing a different college. The goal is to further strengthen the role EIC plays in sustainability initiatives on and off campus and to do so in a way that includes the expertise and experiences from all academic programs on campus. Their work will go a long way in boosting EIC's footprint on and off-campus, improving effectiveness of sustainability related efforts at the EIC, and diversifying the par