Involvement with Practitioners
College Financial Support of Faculty
Participation in Professional Organizations
Workshops and In-house Seminars
Assessment of Development and Renewal

The College of Business engages in a three-part process to support continuing faculty intellectual development and renewal. The first part focuses on the active involvement of faculty with practitioners in the five-county mission focus area of Florida Gulf Coast University, as well as with practitioners associated with international partnerships. External academic and business outreach is supported by four major activity groups: Faculty Applied Institutes, "Clinical" Model sponsored research, academic agreements and understandings, and "Second Circle" International Agreements ("Second Circle" International Model defined). The College of Business was created with a focus on partnership with the external business community of Southwest Florida. Within the mission of the University, the College sought to be a responsive and integral component in the economic development of the area. This serves to link faculty resources to economic development, establish ties with regional businesses and organizations, strengthen student placement and future efforts at external support, and provide real-world currency to faculty and students. Please see Academic and Business Partnerships for details of the strategy, plan and results. Specific components of academic and business outreach are discussed below.

Faculty Applied Institutes and 'Clinical Model' sponsored research are faculty-driven components of the Center for Leadership and Innovation (CLI). The Board of Regents approved the CLI in 1996 for operation as a Type II Center within the Florida Gulf Coast University College of Business. The CLI was established with a mission "…to provide a central base, which will serve to focus, coordinate, and synergize collected programs directed toward strengthening the economic and business health of Southwest Florida."

As part of this effort, the CLI included the concept of applied faculty activity in working with area businesses and organizations. Faculty members are encouraged to form self-funded "Faculty Applied Institutes" in the CLI to extend their expertise into the Southwest Florida economy. There are now eight applied institutes in the CLI, including the newest, Institute for eBusiness Development (please see Faculty Applied Institutes for descriptions and current activities). These applied institutes were activated under the following process: The faculty member develops a brief proposal for the Dean of Business, indicating the focus and purpose of the institute. The dean reviews the proposal with the College department chairs and associate dean. If there is a consensus of support, the dean then requests Academic Vice President approval to activate the institute. Institute activities are assessed as part of the institute director's Professional Development Plan.

Another mechanism to enable applied faculty activity is through the Sponsored Projects and Programs Division of the CLI. This division provides a central base which serves to focus, coordinate, and synergize educational, research, and consultative programs and services directed towards strengthening individuals and organizations in public and private organizations and agencies in Florida Gulf Coast University's service region and beyond. A medical school "Clinical" research model is used to link faculty expertise, student resources and the business community. Faculty and Division Director activities are assessed within the faculty member's Professional Development Plan. Please see Sponsored Research Activities for a summary of sponsored activity.

External academic and business outreach is also supported by academic agreements and understandings, and "Second Circle" International Agreements. Academic Agreements and Understandings recognize the formal working relationships between the Florida Gulf Coast University College of Business and a variety of academic partners. Memoranda of Agreement are created with foreign universities to focus on 1) faculty exchanges, 2) student exchanges, 3) relationship building between business and cultural organizations, 4) business exchanges, and 5) distance education opportunities. Specialized agreements are also used to enable, for example, international delivery of FGCU MBA courses, train in web-based instructional systems design and program delivery, and to promote international friendship. The process used to create agreements and understandings begins with an intelligence phase of identifying international institutions of higher learning with similar mission focus and countries with trading interests and cultural connections to Southwest Florida. The Dean of Business then enters into exploratory discussions with counterparts at the foreign institutions. Successful negotiations lead to general agreements, which can be followed by more detailed agreements focusing on specific activities. Agreements are assessed through monitoring faculty, student and business activities generated by the agreements.

In addition to academic agreements that lead to building relationships between business and cultural organizations, Sister Region Agreements formally recognize the College's unique "Second Circle" International Model. The main purpose of the "Second Circle" International Model is to better link academic programs in Southwest Florida business community to universities and businesses in other parts of the world. Sister Region Agreements recognize this linkage and are created to 1) develop increased understanding and cooperation between institutions involved in economic development, 2) encourage exchange of ideas between educational and professional organizations, 3) advance economic relationships and business opportunities by sharing information and jointly developing exhibitions, trade fairs, and other special programs, 4) promote cultural exchanges in the areas of art, music, archeology, culture, the performing arts, and sports, 5) support and encourage visits and exchanges by the citizens of both regions, and 6) sponsor yearly official communication to insure continued growth of the partnership.

All "Second Circle" activity, including Memoranda of Agreement, Sister Region Agreements, and other activity designed to build a stronger global awareness for the faculty of the College, is shown as "Second Circle" International Agreements. As well, excerpts from the AACSB Accreditation Plan and First Year Candidacy Report provide overviews of faculty activities associated with international and other specialized agreements.

The second part of the process to support the intellectual development and renewal of the faculty involves support provided to the faculty by the College. The College budgets approximately $1,000 per faculty member for travel to professional meetings for the presentation of papers and other intellectual renewal activities. This amount is increased, as necessary, for international conference participation to recognize travel three specific focal areas. Revenues from activities of the Center for Leadership and Innovation are used fund the Summer Research Grant program for the faculty. In this program, faculty submit proposals for summer research activity. These proposals are blindly reviewed by a joint dean/faculty committee, following criteria established for each summer's activity. The summer research activity averages approximately $40,000 each year. This support recognizes the mission-related level of intellectual contributions established by the faculty in order that they be certified as academically qualified in the College of Business. While the standards for contract renewal, promotion and tenure recognize peer reviewed and publicly disseminated scholarship for academic qualification, these support programs demonstrate that faculty are encouraged to engage in a wider array of intellectual activity for their development and renewal. Funding Sources, development/renewal activities, and the resulting intellectual contributions are summarized under Support for Faculty Development.

The faculty initiated in-house workshops in 1999-2000, and the dean’s office arranged for workshops starting in 2000-2001, to support the intellectual development and renewal of the faculty. These workshops alternate between faculty sharing instructional development and pedagogy experiences and developments with discussion of outcomes of research associated with the Summer Research Grant Program. The first daylong workshop, which was held in September 2000, focused on ethics and was conducted by a professor of ethics from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

The last part of the three-part process to support continuing faculty intellectual development and renewal involves support of faculty to participate in leadership roles in professional organizations. The Faculty Service summary report reflects that this participation has shown a steady increase since the opening of the College in 1997. During the first several years, most of the faculty service was committed to creating curricula; instituting external outreach programs; and establishing faculty governance processes, policies and procedures. As these events stabilized except for continuous improvement change, faculty service activity could be expanded to include activities associated with professional organizations.

The main mechanism for assessment of faculty development and renewal activities is through the Professional Development Plan and Annual Review process as described in Section FD.3.a. (Also see the University Faculty Performance Evaluation Document, sections III and V).