Promoting Faculty Development Using Industry Consulting Activities

Faculty development is a major concern for faculty, academic administrators and students. Through experience, the author has discovered that an important source of faculty development is industry consulting and training activities. From the individual faculty member’s standpoint, consulting can provide real world, work related experience and enhance teaching skills. Also, consulting can improve the faculty member’s expertise in his/her discipline. Because of the interrelated nature of teaching, scholarship and service initiatives, faculty have the chance to simultaneously contribute to each of their promotion and annual evaluation criteria with a single consulting/training activity. For academic administrators, consulting activities not only provide a criterion for annual faculty evaluations, but an opportunity for faculty to engage in partnership initiatives. A current theme evolving throughout institutions of higher education involves collaboration and partnership initiatives. Consequently, universities are encouraging various collaborative efforts because of the positive synergies that can result for everyone involved. The author has discovered that industry consulting and training can be an important source of collaboration with benefits for the university and industry. Through consulting, faculty can provide valuable services to industry and the community, and help to promote the reputation and goodwill of the academic department and university. For students, consulting activities can help to ensure that teaching methodologies and the subject expertise of faculty are up-to-date. Industry training offers faculty the opportunity to develop their presentation and audience management skills. Because consulting enables the faculty to discuss and provide examples of current work related concerns, student interest and learning are enhanced. This paper will describe how the author has used various consulting and training activities to develop his expertise and teaching skills, provide service to industry, and promote the university. The paper will provide guidelines and advice for new faculty on the best practices for using consulting activities for faculty development. The paper will focus on the benefits faculty can derive from industry consulting and offer ideas on how they can utilize this faculty development technique.