Faculty Development Director

A Faculty Development Director leads the institutional effort to improve how faculty teach and how students learn — a mission that sounds simple and proves complex in practice, because it requires influencing the professional practices of highly credentialed people who were trained as disciplinary experts, not as teachers, and who may be justifiably skeptical of top-down improvement initiatives.

The strategic dimension of the role involves setting the center's priorities and positioning them within institutional strategic goals. A provost who is focused on student success outcomes wants to know how faculty development connects to retention and graduation rates. A dean facing accreditation review wants to document faculty development participation and impact on course quality. The director's job is to articulate that connection credibly and to build the programs that can actually demonstrate it.

The people management dimension involves leading a team that typically includes instructional designers, faculty developers, educational technology specialists, and program coordinators. These are different professional cultures with different skill sets, and building a team culture that combines design rigor with faculty-facing credibility requires deliberate leadership.

The relationship management dimension is arguably the most complex. Every academic department has different teaching cultures, different levels of openness to development, and different specific challenges. The most effective faculty development directors build relationships with department chairs and key faculty champions who can bring center resources into departments in ways that feel collegial rather than administrative.

External positioning matters too. Directors who are active in the POD Network, who publish SoTL research, and who present at national conferences bring back knowledge, credibility, and national perspective that strengthens their local programs. Institutional leaders who hired from outside for this position often value that external connectedness explicitly.

Education:

• PhD required at most research universities and competitive at teaching-focused institutions
• Field: educational psychology, instructional design, higher education, curriculum and instruction, or a discipline with strong SoTL engagement
• Graduate-level expertise in learning theory, instructional design, assessment, and faculty development practice

Experience:

• 7–12 years in faculty development, instructional design, or closely related higher education positions
• Prior experience as a faculty developer or instructional designer, then senior coordinator, associate director — following the standard career ladder
• Demonstrated track record designing and leading professional development programs
• Experience managing staff teams in academic settings

Leadership competencies:

• Program strategy: ability to set clear goals, allocate resources, and evaluate progress
• Stakeholder management: building productive working relationships with faculty, deans, provosts, and external partners
• Budget management: overseeing an operational budget and pursuing external grants
• Advocacy: making the case for institutional investment in teaching quality to senior leadership

Scholarly profile:

• Publications in SoTL, educational technology, faculty development, or higher education
• Conference presentations at POD, EDUCAUSE, AERA, or discipline-specific venues
• Grant history from NEH, NSF, or private foundations is highly valued

Technical and pedagogical expertise:

• Instructional design and online course quality frameworks (Quality Matters, OLC Quality Scorecard)
• LMS administration and instructional technology strategy
• Inclusive pedagogy frameworks: UDL, culturally responsive teaching, accessibility standards
• AI and emerging technology policy and pedagogical implications

Faculty development director positions are permanent fixtures at accredited colleges and universities, and the field has grown in scope and institutional prominence over the past two decades. Accreditation standards, online education growth, and student success initiatives have all elevated the importance of faculty development from a peripheral service to a central institutional function at many campuses.

The director-level role is competitive to obtain but relatively stable once held. Most teaching centers have weathered budget cycles without deep cuts because their accreditation and student success functions are difficult to defund without regulatory consequences. Directors who demonstrate their center's contribution to measurable outcomes — improved course quality scores, reduced DFW rates in redesigned courses, faculty adoption of evidence-based practices — build the institutional argument for continued investment.

The AI moment is creating new urgency and new opportunity. Faculty development centers that were historically marginalized are suddenly receiving calls from deans and provosts asking for help navigating AI's implications. Centers and directors with established credibility and the capacity to respond thoughtfully — rather than with reactive policy documents — are gaining institutional influence. Those who don't step into this space are watching other administrative units (academic technology, IT, faculty governance) fill it instead.

For those in the pipeline toward director roles, the field is small enough that national visibility matters. Active participation in POD Network and presenting at national conferences puts coordinators and associate directors in front of the hiring committees that make director appointments. Publishing SoTL research, even at a modest level, signals the research orientation that research universities expect in their director.

Salary and career trajectory at the director level are meaningful. Directors at large research universities with faculty appointments earn at faculty salary scales that are substantially higher than administrative mid-management titles. The combination of academic credibility, program leadership experience, and external grant activity makes this career path one of the more financially sustainable tracks for PhDs in education who want to remain in higher education without competing for the traditional tenure-track faculty job market.

Dear Search Committee,

I am applying for the Director of Faculty Development position at [University]. I currently serve as Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at [University], where I have spent six years building and leading our instructional consultation program, coordinating our SoTL grant initiative, and managing a team of two instructional designers and three faculty development specialists.

In my current role I have led two efforts I'm particularly proud of. The first is a departmental liaison model we piloted three years ago, in which center staff are assigned to specific colleges and build sustained relationships with department chairs rather than running all programming centrally. The result is that the center is now consulted during curriculum revision processes rather than after them, and participation in department-level programming has been higher and more sustained than anything we achieved through stand-alone workshops. The second is a SoTL grant program that has funded 22 faculty projects over four years, resulting in 14 published articles and 8 conference presentations. That portfolio has been useful for accreditation documentation and has strengthened the center's credibility with research faculty who were previously skeptical.

I've also been leading our institutional response to AI in teaching. We launched an AI and assessment design faculty community of practice eight months ago with 45 participants across disciplines, and the conversations have been substantive — focused on specific disciplinary contexts rather than generic policy anxiety. I've been presenting on our approach at regional conferences and at POD this fall.

I hold a PhD in Educational Psychology and maintain an active research agenda in faculty development practices, with three publications in the past four years.

I would welcome the opportunity to discuss what you're looking for in this role.

Sincerely, [Your Name]