Funded through: PA Faculty Health and Welfare. Healthy Lifestyle Initiative Grant
The complex demands of teaching, scholarship, and service often leave college professors feeling overloaded, overwhelmed, and stressed out. How can calm, balance, increased well-being, productivity, and times of flow be increased even at this time of great upheaval and uncertainty? Working with colleagues may have a positive impact.
The IUP Center for Teaching Excellence and state APSCUF believe that faculty health and wellness can be positively impacted through a learning community series that draws upon shared readings, reflection, and the skills of IUP faculty and staff to promote the development of balance and calm in a time generally lacking in both. Individual session facilitators will include IUP faculty and staff who are experts in topics related to mental and physical health and academic time management in areas of teaching, advising, and scholarship, as well a community yoga instructor who specializes in yoga for calmness at all fitness levels.
Session One: Planning a Balanced and Productive Semester
Jan 15, 10:00-11:00 a.m.
(IUP login required)
Susan Robison, author of Peak Performing Professor, with join faculty facilitators to provide an overview of the learning community design and guide faculty participants in goal-setting exercises designed to reduce stress through aligning work with core values and prepare holistically for a productive semester.
Session Two: Thriving in the Mix of Physical and Virtual Relationships at Work and Home
Jan 29, 12:15-1:15 p.m.
Spring 2020 brought into sharp focus the challenges presented by online teaching and working from home to productivity, health, and well-being. This session will share challenges presented and best practices in preserving sanity and physical health, and avoiding social isolation while teaching online and allowing faculty to discuss and apply strategies for personal practice. Activities will include an analysis of your home office space to maximize comfort and productivity.
(IUP login required)
(IUP login required)
Session Three: Planning for Faculty Research and Scholarly Productivity Through Self-Care Practices
Feb 12, 12:15-1:15 p.m.
This interactive session will offer faculty an overview of research-supported best practices for scholarly productivity through the use of self-care practices and promoting well-being. An emphasis on “well-functioning” within academic productivity will be discussed as it relates to balancing teaching, service, and scholarship.
(IUP login required) (IUP login required)
Session Four: Understanding How You Spend Your Time and Aligning Time Management with Your Priorities
Feb. 26, 12:15-1:15 p.m.
Time management has two aspects: understanding how you use your time, and intervening to manage your time with your priorities. Prior to the session, faculty participants will be given instructions for a two-week time audit where they engage in a self-study of their own time use. In this session, we will explore methods for aligning your time with your priorities, using your own time audit.
Session Five: Finding Time and Reaching Goals by Sharing Responsibility with Expert Helpers
March 5, 12:15-1:15 p.m.
This session will involve a panel of IUP campus and community service providers who will share content related to offices and personnel that have as their mission the provision of expert assistance to students and faculty. Utilizing these services can enable faculty to gain time by referring inquiries to faculty, staff, and local health wellness agencies who support faculty and student academic work and well-being.
(IUP login required)
Session Six: Zoom Yoga Session
March 19, 8:00-9:30 a.m.
Mid-semester, participants will be led in a relaxing yoga session with Julie Means, a TriYoga teacher. TriYoga is a system of postures and movements, breath, and focus that brings health to the body and peace to the mind. Through the practice of yoga, participants can experience a relaxed and strong body, a clear and calm mind, and inner peace. Studies continue to show that the benefits of yoga include, but are not limited to, emotional balance, mental clarity, and self-confidence; increased flexibility, strength, and endurance; and transformation of body, mind, spirit.
Session Seven: Avoiding Burnout at Semester's End, Assessing Wellness Level, and Planning a Healthy Productive End to the Semester
March 26, 12:15-1:15 p.m.
Week 13 of the semester may feel like the twenty-fourth mile of a marathon. You have come so far and just need to make it to the end! Susan Robison, author of Peak Performing Professor, will join faculty facilitators to share content related to avoiding faculty burnout through a wellness approach. Activities will include a personal well-being self-assessment, working in small and then large groups to share advice on avoiding burnout through self-care, and an avoiding burnout takeaway activity to choose a next step.
(IUP login required)