Salisbury University |  Instructional Design & Delivery Newsletter | September 6, 2022

Faculty Development Day: Self-Care Challenge

Dr. Heidi Fritz challenged participants during her keynote on August 24 at Faculty Development Day to plan for self-care. She stated: "As of March 2022, over 50% of Americans reported exercising less than they wanted to. Yet, according to the American Heart Association, 150 minutes of brisk walking per week significantly cuts your risk of a cardiac event. This could be five 30-minute walks or could be broken into several 10- or 15-minute walks ... even if that's just across campus to the parking lot." She encouraged participants to think about how they can fit more walking minutes into their daily routines and reminded them that health behavior changes do not have to be drastic in order to be effective. Small, consistent changes built into the structure of your day are very effective in the long run.

She also advised participants to avoid the effects of sleep deprivation (e.g. headaches; reduced attention, reasoning and error detection; depressed mood, etc.) by ensuring a consistent seven-eight hours of sleep each evening. Dr. Fritz noted: "The American Psychological Association's 'Stress in America' studies demonstrated that rates of sleep disturbance rose significantly during the pandemic and remain elevated. The first step toward getting our sleep routines back on track is to build into our schedules a dedicated eight hours of mental and physical rest with no other goals during that time. It might not solve all our sleep problems overnight, but that's how to start."

Your challenge: 

1. Start small: Make a plan for tomorrow. Consider which goal you need to chip away at and how you can make it a priority in your schedule.  
2. Evaluate how it went, and then make a plan for the next day.
3. Once you have a sense of how your new change fits into your schedule, try to plan out a week. And be kind to yourself if things don't go according to plan; adjust as needed.

Keeping the Balance: Managing Self-Expectations

Do you find it hard to say "no?" As part of managing expectations, give yourself permission to say "no" strategically. In the Just Say No Monday Motivator article, Kerry Ann Rockquemore, PhD, discusses how faculty struggle with the "just say no" advice and asserts that "the keys to making it work are 1) self-awareness about why you feel the need to say 'yes' so often and 2) developing a process for evaluating and responding to the never-ending stream of service requests you receive." Read the article for six guidelines to help balance your service and commitments as faculty.

The NCFDD is also offering a FREE Overcoming Academic Perfectionism webinar with Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha, PhD, this Thursday, September 8 from 2-3:00 p.m. (EST). 

In this webinar, Dr. Amutah-Onukagha will discuss:

• The causes and consequences of excessive perfectionism.
• The features of academic life that intensify perfectionism
• Strategies to identify when your perfectionism is at work, assess whether it is useful or debilitating, and adjust your standards and behavior accordingly
• The secret to finding real satisfaction in every step of the writing process

Reminder: You will need to log in to NCFDD to read the article and register for the webinar. If you have not yet set up your account, read the next article on how to establish your account!

Faculty Resource: National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD) 

Salisbury University has institutional membership to the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) network that helps faculty achieve extraordinary writing and research productivity while maintaining a full and healthy life off campus. The NCFDD also has a Toolkit for teaching in tough times that includes strategies for classroom incivility, preparing for controversial conversations, finding joy as an academic and an informative dialogue about "Managing Stress in Stressful Times."

 All faculty have access NCFDD resources – so how do you participate?

First go to the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) website and click on Services, then select Institutional Members from the drop-down menu.

Then select Salisbury University from the list of institutional members.

You will then be asked to fill out profile information, such as adding your SU email to confirm your membership and selecting a password to access your NCFDD account. Once you have finished establishing your account, you will be taken to a dashboard where you can start exploring NCFDD resources.

The Faculty Development Calendar

Are you new to SU or have you not had the opportunity to utilize the Faculty Development Calendar yet? If not, you may be wondering: "What is the faculty Development Calendar?" or "How is it useful?"

The Faculty Development Calendar provides information and registration opportunities for workshops, events, colloquiums, presentations, networking and other forms of professional development opportunities available to faculty. These opportunities include SU-hosted opportunities, as well as those provided by outside organizations.

Current faculty development opportunities on September's calendar include:

Fulton Faculty Colloquium 

Tuesday, September 6 ● 3:30-5 p.m. (EST)

Faculty Friday

Friday, September 9 ● 4-6 p.m. (EST)

Bookstores In The World Of Open

(online) Wednesday, September 14 ● 3-4 p.m. (EST)

New Faculty: Academic Advising

Thursday, September 15 ● 10-11 a.m. (EST)

New Faculty: Academic Advising

Friday, September 16 ● 10:30-11:30 a.m. (EST)

General Education Q&A

Friday, September 16 ● 1-2:00 p.m. (EST)

Using MyClasses for Meaningful Feedback

Friday, September 23 ● 2-3:00 p.m. (EST)

General Education Q&A

Friday, September 30 ● 1-2:00 p.m. (EST)

Do you have a professional development opportunity you want added to the Faculty Development Calendar? Email it to suidd@salisbury.edu.

Fall 2022 Webinar Series: Open Education

This series is free and open to the open education community and we encourage you to invite your colleagues to attend or better yet watch together and continue the discussion afterward. Webinars are Wednesdays at 3 p.m. Eastern, except where otherwise indicated.

• September 14 - Bookstores in the World of Open
• October 12 - Open Pedagogy as a Tool for Student Empowerment
• November 9 - Open Ed as Enabler for Antiracism & Social Justice
• December 7 - Measuring the Impact of Open Education

For additional webinar information and registration information, please visit https://www.cccoer.org/webinar/.

Teams Virtual Meeting Tutorial

Using Microsoft Teams for virtual meetings is growing on the campus. Teams is integrated into MyClasses and is used for professional meetings. ID&D uses Microsoft Teams for our virtual appointments. We recommend taking a few minutes to watch our Teams tutorial and to set up the Teams software on your computer.

Need help installing Microsoft Teams? See IT's Knowledgebase article Getting Started with Teams.