About the Center

Find out about the center, its work, and the field of faculty development

  1. Center for Faculty Development
  2. About

Doctoral robes and cap with tassels in the shape of a question mark

Our mission

We promote the holistic professional formation of all Seattle University faculty through an inclusive, scholarly, and interdisciplinary approach to learning and teaching, research practice, and professional development.

We accompany faculty and academic leaders as expert partners, bringing compassion, clarity, and constructive challenge to advance the university’s mission and our shared academic life.

Our values

Community

We build community by being relational, equitable, inclusive, and holistic.

Expertise

We demonstrate expertise by being evidence‑based, context‑informed, and reflective.

Care

We practice care by being compassionate, trustworthy, and attentive to the whole person.

What is faculty development?

Faculty Development - now more commonly called Educational Development in North America - is a sub-discipline of higher education research and practice. Our national organization, the POD Network, defines the field with these three quotes:

  • “helping colleges and universities function effectively as teaching and learning communities” (Felten, Kalish, Pingree, & Plank, 2007, p. 93)

  • actions “aimed at enhancing teaching” (Amundsen & Wilson, 2012, p. 90)

  • a “key lever for ensuring institutional quality and supporting institutional change” (Sorcinelli, Austin, Eddy & Beach, 2005, p. xi).

In other words, faculty development's focus is on improving the work of universities as learning organizations, driven by sound research and applied in contextually appropriate ways.

find out aboutOur work

52.9%

of SU faculty

worked with us in 2023–24

103

sessions in 2023–24

33% learning and teaching, 10% research practice, 57% professional development

90

Individual and group consultations

76% learning and teaching; 4% research practice; 20% professional development

Annual reports

Annual reports with colorful infographics

Here you can find the Center's annual reports for each year since our founding—as the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning—in 2003. Find out what we do, who we work with, and how we evaluate our activities.

Please contact us at faculty-development@seattleu.edu if you would like to give us your feedback or to request additional information about the Center's programs and services.

2023-24 report coming soon

Meet the team

All Faculty & Staff

History of the center

The Center was founded in 2003 as the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning - also known as CETL (pronounced see-tull) - with Therese Huston joining as our inaugural director in 2004. Our focus at that time was teaching, learning, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).

Quickly we came to see support for teaching and learning as only one key component of faculty members' work lives, and in the Jesuit spirit of whole-person education, we began to offer supports in areas beyond pedagogy. 

In 2007, we launched our first Faculty Writing Groups, as part of an initiative to enhance faculty research practice on campus.

In 2011, we introduced the Chairs' Community of Practice to offer informal, interdisciplinary support for professional and leadership development for faculty.  

In 2013, the center changed its name from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) to the Center for Faculty Development (CFD) in response to faculty feedback. We're happy to answer to either of those acronyms.

Our previous name implied that we only supported faculty on questions of teaching and learning, yet since 2007, we've been doing much more than that, so the change of name better reflects our work. The Center supports

  1. Learning and teaching (since 2004)
  2. SoTL—Scholarship of teaching and learning (since 2005)
  3. Research practice (since 2007)
  4. Professional development (since 2011)
  5. Academic leadership (since 2011)

At the time of our name change, "learning and teaching" still made up the majority of our work with faculty. For more recent data, please check our latest annual report.

When Jacquelyn Miller joined the Center in September 2012 to focus on faculty professional development, we knew the time was right to change our name to describe the work that we perform more accurately.

In Winter Quarter 2013, we wrote to all faculty who had used CETL's services in the previous two years to gather their feedback on a possible change of name. Here's the outcome:

  • 107 individuals replied to our survey – thank you!
  • 65.4% of respondents thought we should change our name.
  • Of the shortlisted names we suggested, "Center for Faculty Development" was most popular, with 48.8% of faculty making it their first choice.

The new name had the advantages of being immediately understandable to faculty, of reflecting a common US name for the academic field in which we work, and of encompassing the work we do in the five areas listed above.

Our work with faculty remains voluntary, formative, and confidential, as we support faculty in their professional lives so that they gain real satisfaction from being a faculty member at Seattle University.

Stefani, L. (2003). What is staff and educational development? In P. Kahn, P. & D. Baume (Eds.), A guide to staff and educational development (pp. 9–23). SEDA Series. Kogan Page.

Further reading and resources on Faculty Development

Baume, D., & Kahn, P. (Eds.) (2004). Enhancing staff and educational development. SEDA Series. RoutledgeFalmer.

Baume, D., & Popovic, C. (Eds.) (2016). Advancing practice in academic development. SEDA Series. Routledge.

Eggins, H., & Macdonald, R. (Eds.) (2003). The scholarship of academic development. Society for Research into Higher Education/Open University Press.

Gillespie, K. H. (Ed.) (2002). A guide to faculty development: Practice advice, examples, and resources. Anker. [Available on loan from the Center's Library]

Gillespie, K. J., & Robertson, D. L. (2010). A guide to faculty development (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass. [Available on loan from the Center's Library]

International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED). The international faculty developers' association. http://icedonline.net

International Journal for Academic Development (IJAD). The peer-reviewed journal of ICED. [Available online via SU Library]

Kahn, P., & Baume, D. (Eds.) (2003). A guide to staff and educational development. SEDA Series. Kogan Page. [Available on loan from the Center's Library]

Land, R. (2004). Educational development: Discourse, Identity and Practice. Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press.

Macdonald, R., & Wisdom, J. (Eds.) (2002). Academic and educational development: Research, evaluation and changing practice in higher education. SEDA Series. Kogan Page.

Professional & Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD Network). US faculty developers' association. http://www.podnetwork.org/  

Schroeder, C. M. (2011). Coming in from the margins: Faculty development's emerging organizational development role in institutional change. Stylus. [Available on loan from the Center's Library]

Sorcinelli, M. D., Austin, A. E., Eddy, P. L., & Beach, A. L. (2006). Creating the future of faculty development: Learning from the past, understanding the present. Anker. [Available on loan from the Center's Library]

Holistic professional formation Contact us

Center for Faculty Development

Loyola 216

SU faculty in their academic robes