Initiative – Faculty Development

Established in January 2014, the Faculty Development Initiative (FDI) was created to design and implement comprehensive professional development programs for faculty at all career stages, with special attention to those new to teaching.

After conducting a needs-assessment survey across Regional Teaching Academy member institutions, we developed a program fostering evidence-based teaching practices through professional development in three core areas:

• Principles of teaching and learning
• Outcomes and student assessment
• Approaches to student-teacher interactions

The FDI’s educational modules benefit faculty at all career stages while addressing the unique needs of early-career educators. These modules are designed for flexibility—they can be implemented as a complete program or as standalone sessions for targeted faculty development.

Our approach is grounded in research by Steinert et al. (2016), which identified key features of effective faculty development programs:

• Evidence-informed educational design
• Relevant content
• Experiential learning
• Feedback and reflection
• Educational projects
• Intentional community building
• Longitudinal program design
• Institutional support

Beginning as a single initiative, our work expanded in 2020 with the creation of specialized subcommittees to address evolving faculty needs across the western veterinary colleges. Our flagship program, the Veterinary Educator Teaching and Scholarship (VETS) program, covers a broad spectrum of pedagogical topics using interactive and experiential approaches. Today, we operate through five distinct subcommittees: Student Assessment, Educator Well-Being, VETS Clinical Teaching, VETS Fundamentals, and VETS Selectives, as illustrated in the diagram below.