Academic Senate

Faculty Career Resources

The Committee on Career Advising (CCA) manages the UCSC Faculty Mentorship Program and offers workshops, events, and resources that support mentoring and address various issues of concern to faculty. We collaborate with campus administration to organize the New Faculty Orientation at the beginning of each academic year, offer an Annual Meet & Greet event for participants in the Faculty Mentorship Program in the fall quarter, and provide quarterly workshops on subjects of interest, such as teaching, research, and the path to tenure.

CCA is in the process of developing more collaborations and initiatives to further support a campus-wide mentoring culture and promote effective faculty advising. Our goals include advocating for the development of departmental mentoring programs, and creating online resources for mentors and mentees. If you have any comments, concerns, or suggestions, please send comments to senate@ucsc.edu.

Below you will find resource pages for faculty, related to various areas of career development and advancement:

Teaching

Teaching at UCSC:

The UCSC Teaching $ Learning Center (TLC) has a dedicated staff to help you, with resources for designing courses, creating effective syllabi, active teaching, and inclusive teaching as well as workshops, a teaching fellows program and advice on documenting your teaching for personnel reviews.

Here are some sample resources from TLC:

  • Resources for documenting your teaching for personnel reviews.
  • Designing courses: Important Information about focusing on student learning.
  • Incorporation of active learning techniques in your courses.

In addition, the UCSC Academic Senate Committee on Teaching adjudicates the Excellence in Teaching awards each year, and has compiled interviews with award winning teachers on campus, with their statements about teaching and sample syllabi.

Here are some sample resources from COT:

Useful information on Inclusive or Universal Design for Instruction (UDI): Suggestions compiled by the UC Santa Cruz Director of the Disability Resource Center (DRC), Rick Gaubusk that includes:

  1. Always use captioned videos and only purchase videos that are already captioned.
  2. Use a syllabus statement that encourages students to come to your office hours to share their disability related access needed.
  3. Post articles and required reading lists early so that the DRC can convert materials for students using assistive technology to access reading texts.

Resources to help your students succeed at UCSC:

Teaching Resources from outside UCSC:

Advising/Mentoring Graduate Students

Resources for Faculty Mentors

The following two documents are also thorough resources for mentoring graduate students. They are both very useful, but the second document is especially interesting, as it offers a balanced focus on growth for both mentors and mentees, puts emphasis on mentoring junior colleagues of color, and specifies issues that come up for junior faculty of diverse groups.

Resources for Graduate Student Mentees

Research and Grant Writing

The UCSC Office of Research is committed to fostering research on campus with financial and administrative assistance to help with identifying sources for external funding, and planning for and preparing grant applications. Find a list of research resources that highlights the organized research activities by Division. A comprehensive list of the Research Programs and Units at UCSC will help you locate others that have similar research interests and explore the resources available to you on campus. The UCSC Researcher Toolkit consolidates most of the information needed to secure extramural support, but you can find more information at the links below:

The UCSC Committee on Research (COR) sponsors several small seed grants each year.
Find more information about ongoing deadlines:

Other external resources for research funding and grant-writing:

Personnel Reviews

Senate faculty and continuing lecturers undergo regular personnel reviews, with the intent of achieving reappointment, promotion, or merit increases, depending on individual circumstances of hire and career advancement.
The Academic Personnel Office facilitates the recruitment, appointment, advancement, and retention of the most qualified and diverse faculty and academic appointees possible, and you will find important information regarding the process of personnel reviews there:

The committee comprised of senate faculty which makes recommendations to the Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz on appointments, promotions, salaries, and other matters related to the quality of the Faculty.

Below are further resources to help you prepare for your personnel review, including tips for personal statements, and more general advice for mapping out your path to tenure.

DivData is a campus-built system supporting academic personnel reviews:
Workshops & Training for Biobibnet and Divdata System

Teaching resources:

Work-Life Balance

This is a broad topic which ranges from issues like ‘how to find affordable housing in Santa Cruz’ to questions like ‘how many hours of work do academics put in weekly, across disciplines’. Here you will find links to some online discussions among professors at various institutions at various career stages, as well as recreational resources in the Santa Cruz area.

Academic Parents

New faculty members often face the challenge of being or becoming new parents near the beginning of their academic career. The American Association of University Professors suggests these principles and guidelines for appropriate policies and practices regarding family leaves, modified teaching schedules, “stopping the tenure clock,” and institutional assistance for family responsibilities. They state that, “tremendous potential exists for achieving a healthy work-family integration. At the same time, academic culture poses a special challenge. The lack of a clear boundary in academic lives between work and family has, at least historically, meant that work has been all pervasive, often to the detriment of family.”

Here are the UCSC Policies on Leaves of Absence, Including Family-Friendly Policies – Campus Academic Personnel Manual (CAPM)

There is extensive research that new academic mothers are particularly disadvantaged due to cultural norms and expectations regarding their family roles. See this article for more information.

The Academic Mothers Faculty Community Network works to address the special challenges confronting academic mothers by creating a supportive campus-wide network of scholar-moms. They bring together mothers from across campus for occasional meals, family picnics, and organizing meetings. Additionally, they run a Google Group for mothers to connect virtually. The non-hierarchical group provides a space for conversation and for those interested to work on advocacy, arrange childcare swaps, crowdsource material childcare needs, and arrange playdates. Mothers on the tenure track, postdocs, lecturers, and anyone else at the post-PhD stage of her career is welcome to join the group. If you’re interested, contact current group chair to be added to the mailing list.

Faculty Development and Diversity

CCA recommends the following resources on Faculty Development and Diversity:

National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity: The NCFDD is a nationally-recognized, independent organization that provides online career development and mentoring resources for faculty, post-docs, and graduate students. To claim your free Institutional Membership, complete the following steps:

  1. Go to https://members.ncfdd.org/join
  2. Choose University of California, Santa Cruz from the drop-down menu.
  3. Select “Activate my Membership”
  4. Complete the registration form using your institutional email address (i.e. @ucsc.edu)
  5. Go to your institution email to find a confirmation/welcome email. Click “Activate Account” in the email.
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Last modified: Aug 14, 2025