Faculty Values
Faculty Values
To fulfill the educational mission of Austin Community College, we, the faculty, champion the following shared values:
- We support a culture of collaboration, community building, and service with our students, colleagues, and the greater community.
- We advocate access and inclusion.
- We promote academic freedom, freedom of expression, and empowerment.
- We advance scholarship, learning, and the assessment of our work.
- We support student success through exemplary teaching and lifelong learning.
As we embody these values, we cultivate an environment of mutual trust, esteem, and respect.
As a faculty, we have defined each of our values with clarifying statements and examples of potential ways to envision our values in action. These examples are not inclusive of ways our faculty can demonstrate our values.
Faculty Values
Teaching
Exemplary teaching is core to student success. We strive to implement evidence-based practices that promote active and engaged lifelong learning.
Scholarship
Regularly reflecting on our academic and pedagogical/andragogical approaches is essential as we assess our work as a faculty of educators and counselors. We engage in continual improvement in our fields of expertise and teaching in general.
Empowerment
Creating and guiding the learning experience is the responsibility of the faculty. We value academic freedom as fundamental for us to be empowering agents of education.
Inclusion
Access and inclusion are imperative to serve the full range of our diverse communities. We infuse culturally responsive practices in our work to honor every individual’s potential.
Collaboration
Learning from each other and respecting varied viewpoints is vital to accomplishing shared goals and is a hallmark of a healthy college. We seek civil collegiality within our college and community.
Service
Faculty engagement encourages student engagement and success. We actively support our students, departments, college, and community by sharing our time and expertise.
Faculty Values in Action
ACC faculty values play a significant role in the professional development and programming of faculty development and more at ACC. The following are examples of intentional efforts made to ensure we are not only practicing our values but also creating a culture that supports the ACC faculty values:
Awareness Campaign
Framed posters were gifted to ACC instructional leadership to spread awareness of this initiative and hung on every campus in faculty spaces.
Faculty Talent Onboarding
Includes an introduction of the ACC faculty values and alignment of the values to the content being shared, while exploring and sharing concrete examples of how we can support them. Learn more about faculty onboarding.
Faculty Evaluation Process
Provides faculty the opportunity to exemplify the faculty values through their roles and activities at the college. Learn more about the faculty evaluation process.
Online Course Evaluations
Empowers all ACC students to participate in course evaluations and provides timely feedback to faculty on their teaching. Learn more about online course evaluations.
Teaching and Learning Academy
Anchored in the ACC faculty values and developed by faculty for faculty, the Teaching and Learning Academy (TLA) contributes to student success by supporting faculty through evidence-based teaching strategies, reflective practice, and teaching innovation. Learn more about the Teaching and Learning Academy.
Coming Soon
Interdisciplinary Course Observation Pilot
Provides faculty from different disciplines the opportunity to collaborate and learn from each other’s teaching and course design.
Service-Learning Training
Encourages faculty to reflect on alignment between their values and service-learning as a pedagogical tool in their teaching.
Email tledcomms@austincc.edu to add your program to the “Faculty Values in Action” list.
History
The Faculty Senate and Adjunct Faculty Association collaborated during the fall 2017 semester, bringing faculty together to discuss and define ACC faculty core values. The goal of this effort was to shape future faculty programming and realign ACC processes such as professional development, instructor/course evaluations, new faculty orientation, and shared governance so that they reflect and support faculty values and roles in the college.
In these dialogues, faculty explored questions such as:
- What are the most important elements in your role as a faculty member at ACC?
- What do you invest your time and effort in?
- What goals are important as you teach?
- How do you serve your students, the college, and our community?
A total of 101 faculty participated in crafting these values through more than 40 hours and 16 dialogue events. Following that, a committee of faculty volunteers gathered feedback and further refined the values statement and logo. Learn more about the best practices we followed in our Criteria on Assessing Core Values.
Faculty Values Comments
The first version of the faculty values has been completed. Understanding that this is a working document, we are collecting ongoing feedback and comments from our faculty to ensure we provide every opportunity to include the majority of the faculty voice in our values.
Teaching at Austin Community College
Visit the Employment at ACC page to learn detailed information about the hiring process for faculty.