COSAM News Articles 2019 April Auburn Offers Valuable Resources to Support Career Development

Auburn Offers Valuable Resources to Support Career Development

Published: 04/23/2019

Auburn University graduate students, post-docs and faculty now have valuable resources available to them to support career development. Auburn University is now an institutional member of the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD), which is an organization that provides external mentoring and career development resources.

The center offers online and on-site training workshops, leadership development programs, individual coaching, and institutional consulting to increase research and writing productivity and improve work-life balance.

Garry Morgan, special assistant for Inclusion and Diversity Education, said he and Dr. Taffye Benson Clayton, associate provost and vice president for Inclusion and Diversity, both formerly worked at institutions that were associated with NCFDD and worked to bring these resources to Auburn. The Office of the Provost sponsored the initial purchase and Auburn has been an institutional member for close to one year.

“We are both from institutions that had NCFDD and saw how powerful it was,” Morgan said. “We saw what it meant for recruitment, what it meant for retention, and what it also meant for success. It was a really powerful resource. It was a no-brainer for us knowing that Auburn was not an institutional member.”

Membership is open to anyone with an Auburn.edu email address and offers a weekly “Monday Motivator,” monthly core curriculum webinars, monthly guest expert webinars, dissertation success curriculum for graduate students, writing challenges, access to the Member Library and more.

The Faculty Success Program is also available for a fee.

“This is an exciting online tool,” Morgan said. “It’s a 12-week intensive boot camp for tenure track faculty that engages them in small groups, but offers individual coaching as well.”

University professors and staff members utilizing the resources have had positive feedback.

“NCFDD has been an amazing asset for me!” said an assistant professor in the Auburn University School of Kinesiology. “I am in the Faculty Success Program right now and cannot say enough positive things about it.”

For more information about membership, visit diversity.auburn.edu/ncfdd/.