A first year with a plan
New faculty are grouped into a small cohort that meets monthly across their first year — course design, an observed teaching visit, the assessment cycle their program uses, and an assigned mentor in their own college who is not their chair, deliberately, so the conversation can be candid.
Teaching circles
Ongoing faculty form voluntary teaching circles around a shared problem — large-lecture engagement, lab safety instruction, accessible design — that run for a semester and usually produce something concrete: a redesigned assignment, a shared rubric, a set of accessible slide templates other instructors can reuse.
Grants and leadership tracks
Development grants fund a conference, a course redesign or a small applied-scholarship project twice a year, reviewed by a faculty committee rather than administration. A parallel leadership program prepares associate and full professors interested in a chair or dean role.
The practical details
New-faculty program: A full first year, cohort-based. Development grants: Reviewed twice a year. Teaching circles: 6–10 faculty, one topic per semester. These specifics can change from year to year, so confirm anything time-sensitive directly with the office below before you rely on it.
If you have a question
This is handled by Center for Teaching & Learning (Halvorsen Library, Level 3). Call (715) 555–0265 or email teaching@uwporterfalls.edu during the fall and spring terms, or sign in to MyPorter to send a message or book a time. If it turns out another office owns the question, they will route it rather than send you back to the start.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.