Advancing Faculty Excellence

You are chairing a search committee. A senior faculty member is forceful about their opinions in a way that is intimidating to the earlier-career committee members and shuts down discourse. Committee members seem uncomfortable. What can you do? In this episode of Advancing Faculty Excellence, we are joined by special guest Denise Sekaquaptewa, the Director of the ADVANCE Program. Dr. Sekaquaptewa thoughtfully illustrates how faculty can leverage the Eight Levers to Shift Climate for Respect and Inclusion so that faculty members of all ranks can contribute freely to departmental discussions, with confidence that their views will be respectfully considered.   Featured RISE Case Study: CCS #11 Addressing Faculty Power Imbalances   Speaker bio: Denise Sekaquaptewa serves as Director of the U-M ADVANCE Program, after having previously served on the STRIDE Committee and as the Associate Director for Research in ADVANCE. She is a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Psychology. She received the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award (2015), and the Sarah Goddard Power Award (2012) from the University of Michigan for her work on diversity-related issues.   Episode Resources: Disarming racial microaggressions: Microintervention strategies for targets, White allies, and bystanders. (Sue, et al..American Psychologist, 2019) Hierarchical microaggressions in higher education. (Young, K., Anderson, M., & Stewart, S., Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 2015) Inclusive excellence toolkit. (Treviño, J., Walker, T., & Leyba, J., University of Denver, 2009) Eight Levers to Shift Climate for Respect and Inclusion. The Respect in Striving for Excellence (RISE) Committee. (2022, August) University of Michigan ADVANCE Program. Find a full episode transcript on the podcast website. Enjoyed this episode? Explore more case studies and resources at https://advance.umich.edu/rise/.   Credits:  Hosts: Mike Liemohn, Associate Director, Advance Program & Kelsey Arras, Communications and Project Specialist, ADVANCE Program Producer: Kelsey Arras, Communications and Project Specialist, ADVANCE Program Music: WP Norton & So Say We All! Production Support: Shapiro Library Design Lab

A faculty member offers an idea at a meeting, which is ignored by her colleagues. Later, another faculty member offers a variant of the same idea, and he is praised for his “innovative” idea. What do you do now? In the fourth episode of Advancing Faculty Excellence, we are joined by Sophie Walters, Director of Prevention Education, Assistance & Resources (PEAR) who walks us through how to address this scenario. She dives into how the Eight Levers to Shift Climate for Respect and Inclusion can be used both proactively and reactively to create a climate in your unit where everyone’s voices are welcomed and heard. Featured RISE Case Study: CCS #10 When Women’s Ideas are Co-opted Sophie Walters serves as the Director at the Prevention, Education, Assistance & Resources (PEAR) Office within the Equity, Civil Rights, and Title IX (ECRT) Office. Born and raised in France, Sophie went to law school in Paris and moved to New York City for her Master of Arts degree in Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She also obtained her Master in Social Work from the University of Michigan. Previously, Sophie worked at the Prevention, Outreach and Education Department (POE) at Michigan State University and at the Crime Victims Assistance Unit (CVAU) at the Bronx District Attorney’s Office where she gained her expertise in sexual and gender-based misconduct. She is passionate about developing and facilitating prevention programming for faculty and staff on the Title IX regulations, university misconduct policies, and supporting resources in order to build an inclusive, trauma-informed, and violence-free environment for all. Episode Resources: Prevention Education, Assistance & Resources (PEAR) Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) Facilitation Workshops Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018) An Antidote to Microaggressions? Microvalidations. (Morgan Roberts, L., Grayson, M., & Dennard Rosser, B., Harvard Business Review, 2023) Eight Levers to Shift Climate for Respect and Inclusion. The Respect in Striving for Excellence (RISE) Committee. (2022, August) University of Michigan ADVANCE Program. Find a full episode transcript on the podcast website. Enjoyed this episode? Explore more case studies and resources at https://advance.umich.edu/rise/. Credits:  Hosts: Mike Liemohn, Associate Director, Advance Program & Kelsey Arras, Communications and Project Specialist, ADVANCE Program Producer: Kelsey Arras, Communications and Project Specialist, ADVANCE Program Music: WP Norton & So Say We All! Production Support: Shapiro Library Design Lab

A BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) faculty member tells you, the chair, that large courses and time-intensive, undervalued service are disproportionately assigned to junior BIPOC (jBIPOC) faculty, and that the resulting inequities are exacerbated by so-called “invisible” service. How can you foster respect and inclusion in your unit after learning this?  In this episode of Advancing Faculty Excellence, Dr. Allen Liu, Professor of Mechanical Engineering explores approaches that leaders and faculty members can take to promote the equitable distribution of labor within their departments. Drawing on the Time, Routines and Structures, Opportunities, Interactions, Expectations, and Environment levers, Dr. Liu offers clear examples of how to make “invisible” work visible and how to meaningfully recognize the service labor that departments rely on. Allen Liu is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Biophysics at the University of Michigan. Driven by a passion for understanding cellular mechanotransduction and bottom-up synthetic biology, his research integrates techniques from quantitative cell biology, synthetic biology, biophysics, and microfluidics. Dr. Liu holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry (Honors) from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley. He completed postdoctoral training at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla before launching his independent research group in 2012. His scientific contributions have earned him the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and recognition as a Young Innovator and Rising Star by the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Special Interest Group of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). He is an elected Fellow of BMES and has received international fellowships, including the Endeavour Executive Fellowship (Australia) and the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (Germany). Featured RISE Case Study: CCS #7 Distribution of Labor Episode Resources: Equity Minded Faculty Workloads (O’Meara et al., American Council on Education,  2021) Faculty Time Allocation at Historically Black Universities and Its Relationship to Institutional Expectations (Escobar, et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2021) Undoing the Can of Worms (O’Meara, Inside Higher Ed, 2018) The Hallway Ask (O’Meara, Inside Higher Ed, 2018) The Burden of Invisible Work in Academia (University of Oregon Social Sciences Feminist Network Research Interest Group, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 2017) Eight Levers to Shift Climate for Respect and Inclusion. The Respect in Striving for Excellence (RISE) Committee. (2022, August) University of Michigan ADVANCE Program. Find a full episode transcript on the podcast website. Enjoyed this episode? Explore more case studies and resources at https://advance.umich.edu/rise/. Credits:  Hosts: Mike Liemohn, Associate Director, Advance Program & Kelsey Arras, Communications and Project Specialist, ADVANCE Program Producer: Kelsey Arras, Communications and Project Specialist, ADVANCE Program Music: WP Norton & So Say We All! Production Support: Shapiro Library Design Lab

Recent survey results show that 20-30% of faculty and staff in your unit identify as having a disability*. As a department chair, how do you create a climate where those with disabilities feel respected and supported? In this episode of Advancing Faculty Excellence, Dr. Amy Hughes, Professor of Theatre & Drama (SMTD), explores how leaders can create a culture of access in their departments and beyond. Using the Eight Levers to Shift Climate for Respect and Inclusion, Dr. Hughes shares strategies for proactively building a departmental climate where accessibility is understood as both a shared responsibility and a collective benefit. *We define disability broadly and inclusively, regardless of whether or not respondents have any official diagnosis or documentation, to encompass physical disabilities, sensory disabilities, chronic illnesses, neurodivergence, mental health conditions, learning disabilities, and more that can at times make job-relevant tasks difficult. Featured RISE Case Study: CCS #8 - A Climate Supportive of Disability  Amy E. Hughes is a Professor of SMTD Theatre & Drama, a Faculty Associate in LSA American Culture, and a Faculty Associate Director of ADVANCE. Her interests and expertise include disability studies, human-animal studies, material and visual culture, digital humanities, documentary editing, and culturally responsive pedagogy (via Dr. Geneva Gay). Her latest book, An Actor’s Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States, was published by University of Michigan Press in September 2025. Episode Resources: U-M Disability Equity Office & U-M Digital Accessibility Promoting Supportive Academic Environments for Faculty with Mental Illnesses. (Margaret Price & Stephanie L. Kerschbaum, 2017) Faculty and Staff Experiences in LSA with Disabilities & Accommodations. (U-M ADVANCE Program, 2022). The Problems of Ableist Language. (MelodyS, 2020, Medium). Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time. (Ellen Samuels, Disability Studies Quarterly, 2017) Eight Levers to Shift Climate for Respect and Inclusion. The Respect in Striving for Excellence (RISE) Committee. (2022, August) University of Michigan ADVANCE Program. Find a full episode transcript here Enjoyed this episode? Explore more case studies and resources at https://advance.umich.edu/rise/. Credits:  Hosts: Mike Liemohn, Associate Director, Advance Program & Kelsey Arras, Communications and Project Specialist, ADVANCE Program Producer: Kelsey Arras, Communications and Project Specialist, ADVANCE Program Music: WP Norton & So Say We All! Production Support: Shapiro Library Design Lab

What do you do if you’re in a faculty meeting, and a faculty colleague says something that is off topic, disparaging, or ‘playing devil’s advocate’? Episode 1 of the Advancing Excellence Podcast is here to help provide some strategies for navigating this type of situation.  On the debut episode of the U-M Advancing Excellence Podcast, hosts Mike Liemohn and Kelsey Arras are joined by Dr. Christine Simonian Bean, Associate Director of the CRLT Theater Program. Using the  Eight Levers to Shift Climate for Respect and Inclusion, Dr. Bean provides examples of how to navigate dealing with a bad actor, both proactively and reactively.  Featured RISE Climate Case Study: CCS #4 Interrupting a Bad Actor Christine Simonian Bean (she/her) is the Associate Director of the CRLT Theatre Program and a member of the ADVANCE Program's RISE Committee. Previously, Christine was an Assistant Director for Faculty Programs and Services at Columbia University's Center for Teaching and Learning, and a Graduate Associate at Northwestern University’s Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching. She earned her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 2016. At CRLT, Christine provides strategic direction for the CRLT Theatre Program; integrates programming into college and campus initiatives; and designs, facilitates, and assesses sessions and curricula that promote a more equitable higher education community.  Episode Resources: Eight Levers to Shift Climate for Respect and Inclusion. The Respect in Striving for Excellence (RISE) Committee. (2022, August) University of Michigan ADVANCE Program. Proactive Microresistance in a Microaggressive World (Cheung, Faculty Focus, 2021) Disarming racial microaggressions: Microintervention strategies for targets, White allies, and bystanders. (Sue, et al..American Psychologist, 2019) Getting Past No: Negotiating in Difficult Situations (Ury, 1993) Microresistance as a Way to Respond to Microaggressions on Zoom and in Real Life (Cheung, Faculty Focus, 2021) Find a full episode transcript here. Enjoyed this episode? Explore more case studies and resources at https://advance.umich.edu/rise/. Credits:  Hosts: Mike Liemohn, Associate Director, Advance Program & Kelsey Arras, Communications and Project Specialist, ADVANCE Program Producer: Kelsey Arras, Communications and Project Specialist, ADVANCE Program Music: WP Norton & So Say We All! Production Support: Shapiro Library Design Lab

While we all may agree that experiencing respect at work is important, fostering a welcoming workplace climate can be more complicated. The first season of ADVANCE’s new podcast (ADVANCING Faculty Excellence) offers specific strategies for cultivating a workplace environment where everyone is treated with professionalism and dignity. With an emphasis on practical approaches, we’ll draw upon the expertise of the ADVANCE RISE Committee and their climate case studies. We’ll take on topics such as interrupting a bad actor, promoting service equity, and addressing power imbalances among faculty. Ready to listen? Get started with this 5-minute introduction, hosted by Mike Liemohn, ADVANCE Faculty Associate Director, RISE committee co-chair, and professor of engineering and produced & edited by Kelsey Arras, ADVANCE Communications and Project Specialist. Transcripts and show notes are included with every episode. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.