Greetings colleagues,

I hope this finds you well. We have a full program of Spring events scheduled. Some are face-to-face, and some are online, to better connect between campuses. Please see our events page here for more detail: https://afw.wsu.edu/events/

Also, we are partnering with the Graduate School’s Professional Development Initiative for a discussion of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Date TBA.

Calls for nominations will go out this week for the AFW Grad Awards and Sam Smith Awards. Also, not affiliated with AFW but potentially of interest: the Yang Liu (Wendy) Excellence in Teaching Award recognizes a faculty member at WSU who excels in teaching/supporting the international community (deadline Friday, Feb. 18).

I want to share this video from Faculty Workload and Rewards Project, an NSF-funded study about how faculty workload is taken up, assigned, and rewarded.
“How can departments foster fair and equitable faculty workloads?”
Faculty are more satisfied, committed, and productive if work is assigned and rewarded fairly.

If you have yet to complete your annual review, note that Activity Insight now includes four new items with text boxes for open-ended responses regarding these areas: High-Impact Practices; Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access; Community Engagement, and Internationalization. They can be found in the WSU Institutional Priorities screen, by clicking “Add New” and then, under the first text box “Review Year,” typing “2021.” This page has been added because faculty have been concerned that certain types of work are not recognized or valued. The administration values work in these areas and wants to highlight them. These categories are optional, not mandatory.

As this newsletter comes to you on Valentine’s Day, there are some touching photos of WSU love stories up on WSU’s FB page. These represent just a few of the couples who met at WSU.

Also, the best six minutes of my morning were spent watching the Indigenous Love Words Project. People from around the world sent in their responses to the question, “How do you say ‘I love you’ in your Indigenous language?”

Remember, you are loved and needed.

Yours,
Melissa Parkhurst
AFW President