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Opportunities & Resources

As a full-time faculty member at Swarthmore, you have access to several on campus and off campus resources that help support your curricular, pedagogical and research initiatives.

Here you can find information on Support for Reading/Writing Groups, Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), Regional Faculty of Color Working Group, TriCo Mellon Brainstorming Seed Grants, The Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges, and Research/Writing Support: NCFDD Member Benefits.

National Consurtium for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) Member Benefits

Swarthmore's NCFDD Institutional Membership provides an external mentoring community designed to help faculty members of all ranks increase research and writing productivity and improve work-life balance.

Membership Benefits include:

  • The Monday Motivator (weekly productivity email)
  • Access to monthly core curriculum
  • Access to guest expert webinars
  • Access to multi-week courses
  • Access to the Career Center
  • Audio and video recordings, slides and transcripts from all webinars
  • Access to moderated monthly writing challenges and monthly mentor matches

To register and access member benefits visit the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity website.

Mellon Tri-College Faculty Forum Grants

Brainstorming and Seed Grants support faculty projects related to research, teaching, curriculum, or service/governance. The grants are flexible as to the nature and scope of the initiatives funded. Projects could include faculty working groups, topical workshops or symposia, "outreach" activities, invited speakers, travel money for faculty training, etc. The Steering Committee particularly welcomes collaborative proposals that bring together faculty from the three colleges as well as proposals that are difficult to fund through conventional sources. All faculty members at Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges are eligible to apply. Please visit the Mellon Trico website for more information.

The Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges

The Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges (AALAC) is a group of twenty-five institutions striving to advance liberal arts education through collective efforts to support faculty research and teaching. AALAC aims to enhance the overall experience of students and to develop faculty leadership. Originally funded through a Mellon Foundation grant, the schools that comprise AALAC continue to explore the role of their institutions in the landscape of higher education and thereby to address more effectively the pressing challenges facing American liberal arts colleges.

Swarthmore has been a member of this collective since its inception in 2006. AALAC hosts annual multi-institution faculty development workshops. Information on proposing future faculty workshops and an archive of past workshops can be found on the AALAC website. For more information, contact Janet Tobin, Associate Dean for Academic Administration at Amherst College, at jstobin@amherst.edu