UD ACHIEVE Program

The UD ACHIEVE Program fosters supportive communities where faculty members are challenged and celebrated in their respective journeys to become more productive scholars while maintaining work-life balance. UD ACHIEVE Program offers faculty several programs including our highly successful small-group mentoring program Write-On Site sessions, regular semester planning meetings, and targeted workshops for dossier preparation and mentoring early and mid-career faculty.

UD ACHIEVE Program Goals

  • Assist faculty in building mentoring networks and career pathways
  • Foster work-life balance and professional growth
  • Create supportive communities that enhance faculty productivity and satisfaction
  • Utilize and maximize UD’s institutional NCFDD membership

Work-Life Balance Programs

Weekly Planning Meetings

This 30-minute session offers faculty members space to reflect on their planning process and improve upon it. The host will transition slides guiding participants through three different exercises that help faculty members structure their next week.

Semester Plan Workshops

Held at the beginning of UD’s summer, fall, winter, and spring terms, the Semester Plan Workshops offer a space to foster scholarly production. Faculty members can attend this hybrid workshop to outline their goals for the semester and develop a semester structure to meet these goals.

Assess & Adjust Workshops

Faculty members and participants from the Semester Plan Workshops are invited to join a hybrid mid-semester Assess & Adjust Workshop. The Assess & Adjust Workshop allows faculty members to reflect on how their schedules and demands of the semester have helped or hindered them from reaching their goals for the given semester.

Write-On Site Sessions

Write-On Site sessions are an effective way of increasing scholarly productivity through co-working sessions, whether in person or via Zoom. These sessions help protect your time and provides motivation. UD’s ACHIEVE Program offers numerous Write-On Sites sessions each semester. Register by emailing facultyachievement@udel.edu.

Write-On Site sessions are simple. Show up at the designated time and place or (Zoom meeting), settle in, and work for whatever time you’ve promised yourself. Participants report the importance of adding this routine to their weekly schedule as means of protecting their dedicated writing time each day. This is an open invitation to all faculty members who wants to establish an on-campus writing time routine with added personal accountability. Scheduled write-on site sessions can be located here.

Small Group Mentoring Program

Do you want to develop skills to create a greater work-life balance and increase your scholarly productivity? The UD ACHIEVE Small Group Mentoring Program works with faculty in small groups of 3 or 4 and is led by an experienced mentor. This mentoring program is designed to help all faculty achieve their scholarly goals throughout the semester while maintaining, or improving, work-life balance.

This program offers an accountability and support system and provides resources to help faculty members succeed even with occasional, unforeseen challenges. These groups meet every week to establish scholarly goals, report on progress, celebrate successes, discuss effective strategies and develop plans to navigate the challenges that the semester and life brings.

The UD ACHIEVE Program also offers a Summer Planning Workshop that provides guidance, protects time and space for your summer. Space is limited.

For more information about the UD ACHIEVE Small Group Mentoring Program register here.

This mentoring program is open to all post-docs and faculty of all ranks and tenure tracks. These small groups meet for an hour every week during the fall and spring semesters to establish writing goals, report on progress, discuss effective strategies for navigating some of the challenges of academia, and celebrate one another’s successes. All mentors and coaches are members of the UD ACHIEVE Program community who have participated in the NCFDD Faculty Success Program Bootcamp or been trained as UD ACHIEVE Program mentors.

If you have any questions or would like to join the UD ACHIEVE Program community, please contact Dr. Jennifer Saylor at facultyachievement@udel.edu.

Dr. Jennifer Saylor, Provost Faculty Fellow