The Faculty Conversation Series at North Carolina State University, offered by the Office for Faculty Excellence, is a virtual option to connect faculty across campus to discuss topics immediately relevant to the unique teaching needs that we are currently experiencing, ranging from technical aspects of teaching online to mental health needs of…

At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in the Spring of 2020, North Carolina (NC) public schools moved to distance education in which all students attended classes on video conferencing programs. During this time, NC State University faculty offered virtual guest talks to NC K-12 students. Eighty-eight faculty from three NC State colleges…

North Carolina postsecondary faculty, similar to faculty around the world, who prepared their spring 2020 semester courses for face-to-face delivery, were required to quickly transition to Rapid Online Teaching and Learning (ROTL). This transition was expected within a short time frame, often one to two weeks, and for many faculty members, both…

While plenty of literature exists that explores faculty-to-student mentorship in higher education, the bulk of this scholarship focuses on graduate students and upper-division undergraduate students, not first-year undergraduates. This is problematic as the first year of college is the one in which mentorship has the largest impact on student…

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced colleges and universities in the United States to make decisions about how to best protect students and employees from the virus. In this article, we investigate the factors that lead to human resources decisions to mandate vaccines among students and employees. We draw heavily on the crisis management literature…

The intersection in 2020 of the new COVID-19 pandemic with the ongoing pandemic of anti-black racism exacerbated existing injustices as well as caused and revealed new inequities in US higher education. Because inequities in assessment in particular were intensified by these twin pandemics, faculty at several US colleges revised assessment…

This report by the Special Committee on Governance, Academic Free­dom, and Institutional Racism in the University of North Carolina (UNC) system considers the influence of the gerrymandered North Carolina state legislature on the systemwide board of governors and campus boards of trustees and how political pressure has obstructed meaningful…

This research study aimed to describe the perceptions of faculty regarding teaching students who experienced anxiety and depressive disorders at one rural North Carolina community college. Through a qualitative case study approach, this study revealed the experiences of faculty, representing a variety of disciplines and who teach a diverse…

This Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative (the Collaborative) report examines how faculty and staff at seven community colleges and two broad-access universities reconsidered students' online learning needs in the midst of the pandemic. The report focuses on a set of interconnected student mindsets and competencies that the authors…

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the world continue. These impacts influence many aspects of life, work, healthcare, and education in the U.S., which are drastically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, a considerable challenge to tertiary-level education has been how to adapt our teaching styles and modalities to keep all…

In recent years and especially over the past 12 months, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the unrest after the death of George Floyd, community colleges have been making efforts to view and rethink their missions through an equity lens. These efforts have included turning this prism toward institutional operations like student services, human…

Community colleges across the country are plagued with tight budgets--caused in part by state disinvestment and chronic federal underfunding. For rural community colleges, these challenges are even more acute, as their needs are greater and the costs of providing services higher. The COVID-19 pandemic has only deepened the prosperity gap between…