The Peak Performing Professor

Drawing on research from the fields of neuroscience, faculty development, work productivity, positive psychology, and resilience, The Peak Performing Professor is filled with techniques, strategies, and practical tools for managing the complexities of academic life while maximizing professional potential. This much-needed resource reveals the four skill sets (PACE) that enhance peak performance and shows faculty step-by-step how to: Power their work and lives with purpose and meaning. Align all of their activities with that purpose. Connect with mutually helpful colleagues and intimates. Energize themselves to thrive in this interesting and engaging career. To help develop these essential skills, the book contains exercises that can help faculty hone their abilities to anchor their work, roles, and use of time in their most deeply held values; to integrate their personal and professional lives into a seamless whole; to experience more work-life balance; and, ultimately, to create a legacy of a life well-lived. Administrators will also find the book a useful tool for guiding their faculty to produce, stay engaged, and experience job satisfaction. "The first time I saw Susan present her Pyramid of Power model, I knew I needed to learn more. This book provides both the ideas and the practical advice that can help faculty and faculty developers make our lives more effective and more livable." —L. Dee Fink, author of Creating Significant Learning Experiences "An amazing book—essential reading for every faculty member. The integration of sound scholarship and practical advice is extraordinary. This book will power faculty workshops and faculty lives!" —Barbara Walvoord, professor emerita, University of Notre Dame; author of Effective Grading

Teaching history well is not just a matter of knowing history—it is a set of skills that can be developed and honed through practice. In this theoretically informed but eminently practical volume, Mary Jo Festle examines the recent explosion of research on the teaching and learning of history. Illuminated by her own work, Festle applies the concept of "backward design" as an organizing framework to the history classroom. She provides concrete strategies for setting up an environment that is inclusive and welcoming but still challenging and engaging. Instructors will improve their own conceptual understandings of teaching and learning issues, as well as receive guidance on designing courses and implementing pedagogies consistent with what research tells us about how students learn. The book offers practical illustrations of assignments, goals, questions, grading rubrics, unit plans, and formats for peer observation that are adaptable for courses on any subject and of any size. Transforming History is a critical guide for higher and secondary education faculty—neophytes and longtime professionals alike—working to improve student learning.

This best-selling text presents new and returning college students with practical, hands-on methods of increasing their performance inside and outside the classroom. It helps them make the connection between their academic efforts and their job and life skills. They learn a variety of personal productivity skills related to positive work and study habits, as well as creative problem-solving, organizational, and interpersonal skills. The new edition has been extensively updated to include an even stronger integration of the theme of "Self-Management," reinforcing the importance of character and personal responsibility. All the interactive exercises and assessments have been revised to promote critical thinking, and a new culminating chapter now focuses on exploring majors, career development, and service learning.

How can new faculty find success in academia and what can universities do to support them? In this book, the author demonstrates how a coaching-focused stance toward faculty development can improve equitable conditions within the university and contribute to faculty retention and well-being. For faculty and graduate students, this book emphasizes the skills needed to be a successful academic with a focus on lifespan learning. For universities, this book articulates how institutions can implement an equity-driven plan for faculty development. In the first section, Mitra investigates the structures that can contribute to inequities, spotlighting the unspoken assumptions and lack of clarity of institutional processes. In the second section, she interweaves the building blocks needed for faculty success (agency, belonging, and competence) with the traditional academic expectations of research, teaching, and service. With engaging vignettes and extended examples of faculty experiences, The Empowered Professor centers on the space in which individuals can find success within academic settings while maintaining the integrity of themselves. Book Features: Action steps universities can take to improve faculty recruitment and retention.Workbook-style exercises to help academics connect personal goals and experiences with book content.An equity-driven model of faculty development that connects individual goals with an understanding of academic structures. Research-based evidence on how inequitable structures are perpetuated by university policies, with insights for increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Digital tools have long been a transformative part of academia, enhancing the classroom and changing the way we teach. Yet there is a way that academia may be able to benefit more from the digital revolution: by adopting the project management techniques used by software developers. Agile work strategies are a staple of the software development world, developed out of the need to be flexible and responsive to fast-paced change at times when “business as usual” could not work. These techniques call for breaking projects into phases and short-term goals, managing assignments collectively, and tracking progress openly. Agile Faculty is a comprehensive roadmap for scholars who want to incorporate Agile practices into all aspects of their academic careers, be it research, service, or teaching. Rebecca Pope-Ruark covers the basic principles of Scrum, one of the most widely used models, and then through individual chapters shows how to apply that framework to everything from individual research to running faculty committees to overseeing student class work. Practical and forward-thinking, Agile Faculty will help readers not only manage their time and projects but also foster productivity, balance, and personal and professional growth.

Faculty development is essential for promoting excellence in teaching and research, supporting institutional goals, and creating a culture of continuous learning that benefits both faculty members and students. However, educational institutions do not always allocate adequate resources towards supporting their faculty's professional development, especially from the institutional level. Underfunding this support can lead to the inability to attend conferences to keep up with the latest research and pedagogical practices in their fields, the inability to conduct meaningful research, and lack of access to modern technologies. This in turn can limit faculty growth and harm student learning outcomes. Ultimately, faculty who do not feel supported by their institutions can become disengaged or leave. This book attempts to address the needs of faculty from institutions where there may not be adequate resources to support robust faculty development activities. The chapters are written by faculty development experts in the US and Europe who understand the disparities between institutions and want to share programs that can be implemented for little or no cost. Each chapter provides objective, content, implementation, and evaluation details that can be used to replicate the program at other institutions. The hope is to begin to level the playing field in faculty development through sharing successful low resource programs with proven outcomes.

Explore an important, yet understudied concept: faculty scholarly learning. Taking a broad view, this volume explains how scholarly learning is defined and conceptualized by scholars. The authors synthesize the recent literature and organize the findings according to Boyers four forms of scholarship (discovery, teaching, engagement, and integration). They then offer a counternarrative to faculty scholarly learning and the ways in which it is enacted and supported. Recommendations for developing, supporting, and evaluating faculty scholarly learning are also presented. This volume answers: What does scholarly learning look like at different types of institutions? What contexts and/or supports hinder or help faculty members scholarly learning at the different institutional types? What challenges are noted in the extant literature on faculty work around further study or better understanding of faculty members scholarly learning across institutional types? This is the second issue of the 43rd volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

"A transfixing book on how to sustain peak performance and avoid burnout" —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Option B, Originals, and Give and Take "An essential playbook for success, happiness, and getting the most out of ourselves." Arianna Huffington, author of Thrive and The Sleep Revolution "I doubt anyone can read Peak Performance without itching to apply something to their own lives." —David Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of The Sports Gene A few common principles drive performance, regardless of the field or the task at hand. Whether someone is trying to qualify for the Olympics, break ground in mathematical theory or craft an artistic masterpiece, many of the practices that lead to great success are the same. In Peak Performance, Brad Stulberg, a former McKinsey and Company consultant and writer who covers health and the science of human performance, and Steve Magness, a performance scientist and coach of Olympic athletes, team up to demystify these practices and demonstrate how you can achieve your best. The first book of its kind, Peak Performance combines the inspiring stories of top performers across a range of capabilities—from athletic to intellectual and artistic—with the latest scientific insights into the cognitive and neurochemical factors that drive performance in all domains. In doing so, Peak Performance uncovers new linkages that hold promise as performance enhancers but have been overlooked in our traditionally-siloed ways of thinking. The result is a life-changing book in which you can learn how to enhance your performance via myriad ways including: optimally alternating between periods of intense work and rest; priming the body and mind for enhanced productivity; and developing and harnessing the power of a self-transcending purpose. In revealing the science of great performance and the stories of great performers across a wide range of capabilities, Peak Performance uncovers the secrets of success, and coaches you on how to use them. If you want to take your game to the next level, whatever "your game" may be, Peak Performance will teach you how.