Early Career Faculty Program
Extensive interviews with assistant professors at universities similar to the University of Colorado indicate that successful faculty tend, early on, to develop a relaxed, confident teaching method and to create social networks with colleagues both inside and outside their disciplines (see Robert Boice, 1992. The New Faculty Member, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass). CU’s Early Career Faculty Program is designed to assist those who are new to and/or are early in their careers in the professoriate.
The program engages faculty directors from each college and school, or, in the case of the College of Arts and Sciences, from the three divisions of the Arts and Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Natural Sciences. The directors provide informal and formal occasions for faculty to enjoy one another’s company both socially and intellectually. They also support faculty in fulfilling the numerous responsibilities of academic life: for example, integrating research and teaching, developing effective curricula, stating goals for student learning, and assessing which of the goals their students have met.
The program proceeds from the belief that the best professors are not “born teachers” but rather those who have established an effective repertoire of teaching strategies that fit their personalities, their disciplines, and their students’ learning style.
Below is a list of faculty directors, all of whom have been chosen for their distinguished teaching, research, and leadership in the CU-Boulder academic community:
Natural Sciences
Professor Tarek Sammakia
Chemistry & Biochemistry
Arts and Humanities
Professor Kirk Ambrose
Art and Art History
Kirk.Ambrose@colorado.edu
Professor Jennifer Fitzgerald
Political Science
Jennifer.Fitzgerald@colorado.edu
Music
Professor Steven Bruns
College of Music
Steven.Bruns@colorado.edu
Business
Professor Thomas Vossen
Leeds School of Business
