As pandemic effects continue, fostering equitable climates to retain high quality faculty and staff is more important than ever. The UMass ADVANCE team outlines four foundational strategies: communication, resources, flexibility, and adapting equity-informed strategies. Meaningful communicative interactions and supportive resources are critical to faculty and staff job satisfaction. In addition, flexible policies and practices remain key through these challenging times, especially those that address pandemic circumstances and impacts with equity-informed strategies. One key equity-informed strategy for TPR committees can be summed up as “Do not let the 25 percent of faculty able to be more productive during the global pandemic set the standard for the 75 percent who are not able to do so.” (University of Michigan Report). These foundational strategies can help create a climate that benefits all through promoting the value of their contributions, and therefore helps to retain high quality faculty and staff.
Today’s feature was shared with us by the ADVANCE PI team. If you have an article you think we should feature, please email it to advance-mtu@mtu.edu and we will consider adding it to the ADVANCE Weekly Roundup.
The ADVANCE Weekly Roundup is brought to you by ADVANCE at Michigan Tech, which is an NSF-funded initiative dedicated to improving faculty career success, retention, diversity, equity, and inclusion. To learn more about this week’s topic, our mission, programming efforts, and to check out our growing collection of resources, contact us at (advance-mtu@mtu.edu) or visit our website: www.mtu.edu/advance.