New Faculty

One of the great privileges of a provost is a set of activities that occur each fall – welcoming new members of the community to the institution.

This week was New Faculty Orientation, organized by Vice Provost Chandan Vaidya and her talented staff.

For the first time after much too long a hiatus, the two-day event is being held in person. The new faculty are introduced to the Jesuit animation of the university, to faculty shared governance, to the efforts of the University in diversity, equity, and inclusion. The deans of the various schools meet with them to describe the work of their programs. New academic initiatives are presented, with explicit discussion of how new faculty can get involved. Research administrative protocols are described. Promotion and tenure processes are discussed.

Many new faculty have joined Georgetown from other universities. They have prior experience in the day-to-day life of an academic; others come after completing a postdoctoral experience at another institution. Still others have newly completed PhD’s. Some are on the tenure-track at all three ranks; others are teaching professors or research professors. However, all of them are new to their roles at Georgetown. They share an intense curiosity of how things are done here.

The new faculty conveyed an excitement about the various initiatives ongoing at the university. Georgetown faculty are increasingly seeking to use their deep disciplinary knowledge in the service of solving pressing world problems (e.g., environmental degradation, ingrained inequality in housing, education, and income; societal impact of rapid technological change; racial justice). Thus, much of the discussion spurred by the new faculty concerned interdisciplinary work beginning at Georgetown. They were curious about how they could learn about interdisciplinary teams working on problems of interest to them.

We gave them an overview of faculty-led initiatives throughout the university that are efforts to collaborate across fields. Given the mission to building a better world serving the common good, Georgetown is filled with students who seek such experiences. The growing number of research partnerships between faculty and students was clearly an attraction to our new colleagues.

The provost office, along with the hiring units, had reviewed the application packets and curricula vitae of all the new hires. In that sense, we knew a bit about them. But it was deeply rewarding to see in-person the individuals that were so rigorously vetted and then recruited. It was also great to see free-floating, spontaneous conversations among the new faculty. It evoked memories of talking to long-term Georgetown faculty who tell the story of meeting someone from another field during faculty orientation, who became a long-term friend throughout their career.

So, New Faculty Orientation has a lot of content relevant to their new job as a Georgetown faculty member, but there was also acquaintances being made and friendships, started. The annual renewal of a faculty community is gift to all of us.