Fellows Programs/Cohorts
Fellowships provide opportunities to learn, connect, create, and influence. Applications for fellowship opportunities deadline extended to March 7, 2024.
Academic Leadership Fellows
This year-long experience is open to faculty and academic staff who are interested in learning about diverse leadership roles. We anticipate that approximately five fellows will be individually matched with current administrators at MSU who will serve as mentors.
Adams Academy Fellows
Adams Academy Fellows explore the literature on effective university teaching and learning practices and consider how this robust body of research can be used to guide instructional decisions in the courses we teach and learning experiences we design. Participants learn from and contribute to a community of teacher-scholars committed to excellence in teaching and learning in its various settings. Applicants must plan to teach one or more courses or have other instructional responsibilities during their participation in the Academy.
Big Ten Academic Alliance Academic Leadership Program
The Big Ten Academic Alliance Academic Leadership Program, (ALP) provides intensive leadership and managerial development, addressing the challenges of academic administration at major research universities, like tightening budgets, changing student populations, and increasing pressures from external sources. Many of the program’s nearly 1,000 fellows have gone on to serve as college presidents, provosts, and deans.
Lilly Fellows
The program is intended to advance the University’s continuing efforts to support excellence in teaching and learning. The program supports a cohort of up to six faculty or academic specialists at all ranks with at least five years of service to the institution. The goal is to develop academic leaders who will guide the University into the near future with regard to learning, teaching, and educational programming. Participants are expected to focus their work on a project of their choosing that will make a substantial contribution to a unit’s educational efforts. Using the proposed project as a foundation, participants will learn more about how the University works, consider strategies for leading change, and practice what they learn through the activities of their project and small group mentoring and coaching with colleagues within their college and across the University. Lilly Fellowships are open to all tenure-system and fixed-term faculty, academic specialists, and librarians.
Learning Communities
Learning Communities provide safe and supportive spaces for complicated conversations about curriculum and pedagogy and leadership and administrative issues. Michigan State University has supported these initiatives since 2004 and continues to do so through a funding program administered by the Office of Faculty and Academic Staff Development.
Learning Communities at MSU are free to propose their own topics and determine the structures that best support their inquiries. Accordingly, communities tend to vary greatly in their practices, interests, and agendas. All communities, however, share three things in common: they meet at least eight times across the academic year, explore important educational themes, and welcome all members of MSU’s instructional and administrative staff, regardless of appointment type, rank or discipline.