Leadership in Academic Practice
I design and lead academic programs that support early-career academics in developing, evaluating, and demonstrating effective teaching. As Assistant Dean at Duke University, I founded and direct the Certificate in College Teaching (CCT), lead the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) program, and guide initiatives in research ethics and digital pedagogy. Together, these efforts engage several hundred doctoral students and emerging scholars each year.
The CCT, which is the university’s largest postgraduate certificate program, combines credit-bearing coursework, structured peer observation, and a capstone teaching portfolio into a formally recognized, transcripted credential. Rather than operating as a series of optional workshops, it provides a coherent developmental pathway: participants study pedagogy, apply it in their own teaching, receive structured feedback, and articulate their practice through assessed portfolio work. My aim has been to ensure that teaching preparation is intentional, rigorous, and visible within doctoral education.
Scholarly and Evidence-Informed Practice
I treat academic practice as a field of inquiry into how university teachers develop, how teaching cultures form, and how professional standards take shape within doctoral education. The Teaching Triangles peer-observation model, which I have led for more than fifteen years, creates structured interdisciplinary dialogue around teaching. Our longitudinal research on this model, published in To Improve the Academy, examines how peer observation strengthens reflective capacity, professional confidence, and observable changes in teaching practice. Those findings have informed revisions to the model and contributed to broader discussions about peer review and the professionalization of university teaching.
More broadly, my research examines early-career academic identity formation: how doctoral and postdoctoral scholars come to understand teaching as intellectual work rather than performance or compliance. In the graduate-level modules I teach—on teaching portfolios, inclusive pedagogy, and digital learning—I design learning experiences as cycles of planning, feedback, and revision. Participants analyze their own teaching using evidence and shared criteria, learning to evaluate practice systematically rather than rely on intuition alone.
Scholarship, dissemination, and sector engagement are integral to this approach. I study the programs I build, publish findings, and use those findings to refine curriculum, assessment, and mentoring structures. In this way, institutional design and scholarly inquiry inform one another, connecting program-level decisions to ongoing conversations in academic practice.
Professional Formation and International Engagement
Through PFF, I work with colleagues across diverse institutional contexts—liberal arts colleges, community colleges, historically Black universities, and research-intensive institutions—to help early-career academics examine roles across missions and systems. PFF Fellows engage in mentoring, site visits, and guided reflection that deepen their understanding of student diversity, institutional culture, and professional responsibilities.
In recent years, I have extended this work internationally. Collaboration with colleagues in the UK, participation in Advance HE networks, and comparative discussions with British and other international partners have opened inquiry into how early-career academic development differs across national systems. This comparative perspective informs both program design and research questions, situating my work within a broader international field of academic practice rather than a single institutional context.
Inclusion, Ethics, and Digital Innovation
Inclusivity underpins my design decisions. In the Responsible Conduct of Research program, which records more than 4,000 completions annually, I reshaped required provision to foreground mentorship, equity, and professional integrity alongside compliance. Flexible and online formats widen participation for researchers balancing fieldwork, caregiving, or global commitments.
In digital pedagogy and generative AI modules, I support early-career academics in engaging critically with emerging technologies—linking innovation to ethical reflection, inclusive assessment, and evolving educational contexts.
Looking Ahead
I am deepening the research dimension of my work through comparative study of early-career academic development across national systems and collaborative inquiry with international partners. I am especially attentive to how institutions recognize teaching as scholarly practice and how those recognition structures shape professional identity. I also continue to refine how digital innovation, assessment design, and inclusive pedagogy intersect within doctoral education.
Academic development, in my view, requires ongoing critical reflection as much as program design. I approach my own leadership in the same way I ask participants to approach their teaching: as a practice grounded in evidence, dialogue, and continual revision.