OFD Faculty Fellows

The OFD Faculty Fellows Program seeks to expand professional development opportunities and resources for faculty in both scholarship and teaching. Faculty fellows are appointed for one semester and will work with the OFD on a topical or thematic focus, along with a cluster of workshops and programs open to all faculty. The proposed topic and accompanying programming must foster and promote interdisciplinary engagement with a substantive and timely aspect of scholarship and/or teaching and learning.

OFD Faculty Fellows work with the OFD Director and Assistant Directors to develop programming initiatives, connect academic departments and constituencies across campus, design multimedia resources for the OFD website, and prepare an annotated bibliography/list of resources related to the fellowship topic for future faculty use.

OFD Faculty Fellows Applications

The call for Fall 2023 OFD Faculty Fellows will be forthcoming in early April 2023.

Spring 2022 OFD Fellowship

OFD Faculty Fellow: Professor Justine Dunlap (UMass Law)

Contemplative Pedagogy: A Faculty Learning Community

During Spring 2022, OFD Faculty Fellow Dr. Justine Dunlap will facilitate workshops and a reading group on contemplative pedagogy. Throughout the semester, the fellowship will help interested –or just curious—faculty explore what contemplative pedagogy is, how it can be used to facilitate learning across multiple disciplines, and how UMassD might sustain a Faculty Learning Community in Contemplative Pedagogy. The fellowship will also sponsor speakers from our sister campuses and examine the now-extensive materials on this topic.

As delineated in the book Contemplative Practices in Higher Education, contemplative pedagogy practices include mindfulness, contemplative reading and deep listening, contemplative writing (including journal writing), contemplative movement (including labyrinth walking), and compassionate focus towards oneself and others.

The benefits to faculty exploring these practices throughout the semester include:

• building connection among faculty and students as these practices are discussed and implemented;
• increasing effective and compassionate focus on inclusivity and equity in the classroom;
• creating an on-going community of faculty who wish to use these practices on a continued basis and support their colleagues in doing the same.

Past OFD Fellowship Topics