Welcoming New Faculty
.jpg "Herbert Herscowitz, PhD, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs")
.jpg "The Med-Dent building, site of the new faculty orientation")
When Herbert Herscowitz, PhD, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, came to Georgetown, the medical center had no program for welcoming new faculty. “That was back in the seventies,” he says, with a smile acknowledging his significant institutional memory. “So when I took this position, I thought it would be a good idea to have a two-day new faculty orientation in July.
“What I didn’t take into account was the challenge to the attention span listening to that many hours of talking heads—especially for clinical faculty—so each year the orientation has gotten shorter and shorter.”
Currently, new faculty orientation is down to a half-day session in the morning focused on initiating a successful career at GUMC. This year, the session begins at 8:00 a.m. on September 11 in room SW-107 at the Medical-Dental Building. Topics include the organizational structure of the Medical Center and its governance, relevant faculty policies and research compliance issues, academic faculty tracks, guidelines for appointment, promotion and tenure, research opportunities, mentoring, and professional development initiatives.
“The new thing this year is that we are trying to better accommodate the needs and interests of two populations—our clinical and our research faculty,” says Herscowitz. “So we have an afternoon session where we address specific issues of interest to researchers.”
There is also an Orientation Fair beginning at 11:45 a.m. in the South Lobby of the Medical-Dental Building featuring a diverse array of departments and organizations, such as the Benefits Office, Bookstore, Hoya Credit Union, Hoya Kids, Classroom Technology Services, Faculty and Curriculum Support Center, Society for Medical Women Faculty, and the Faculty-Staff Assistance Program, all offering information about their services.
Each year, the information new faculty need to absorb is increasingly critical and complex. As a result, the Office of Faculty & Academic Affairs has instituted a faculty mentoring program, in which senior faculty members act as a resource for junior faculty members to acquire professional skills and attitudes that contribute to personal, institutional, and career success.
“I found the orientation very helpful in knowing what the university offered and expected,” says Kimberly Byrnes, PhD, who recently joined the Department of Neuroscience as a research assistant professor. “It was also a great chance to meet other faculty; there were opportunities for collaboration and equipment sharing right off the start.”
Herscowitz explains that GUMC has gone from practically nothing a decade ago to a very active program now, with monthly faculty development activities and a robust portfolio of support and information resources. To explore these, go to the Office of Faculty and Academic Affairs website.
“It’s very expensive for an institution to recruit and develop a new faculty member,” he says. “To go to all that expense and to have them not succeed—to have to start all over with another person—that’s not what you want to happen. When we welcome new faculty, we want their career at GUMC to be a complete success.”
By Frank Reider, GUMC Communications.
Click here to see a list of new faculty appointments at GUMC in the last 12 months.
