Virginia Tech® home

Week of September 19-23

2022

Reminder: September 30 (next Friday) is deadline for Destination Area 2.0 proposals

The deadline for faculty and project teams to submit Phase I proposals for Destination Area 2.0 Planning and Development Grants is September 30 (next Friday). Proposals and the associated projects are designed to build upon the foundational work of existing Destination Areas and their efforts to create and advance transdisciplinary communities of faculty who have connected across disciplinary boundaries.

Planning and Development Grants of up to $50,000 will be awarded and are expected to support team and project development over an approximately six-month period. Successful proposals will articulate the transformative nature of the work outlined and how it places Virginia Tech in the top tier of global institutions working to solve the problem identified.

For more information on the current Destination Areas as well as the proposal criteria, expectations, and review process for the Planning and Development Grants, please email Catherine Amelink in the Office of the Executive Vice Provost.

Faculty Affairs: Guidance on promotion and tenure cases prior to mandatory year

At the request of the Department Heads Executive Committee, Faculty Affairs has shared a memo with academic deans, department heads, and school directors to provide additional guidance on non-mandatory promotion and tenure (P&T) cases. The purpose of the memo is to clarify that P&T cases do not have to wait until a faculty member’s mandatory year if there is agreement that the faculty member has satisfied all the department’s expectations for P&T.

As a result of extensions, a faculty member may have a probationary period exceeding six years and, with COVID-related extensions, their mandatory P&T year may now be as much as eight to ten years after hire. Furthermore, faculty may have taken the probationary period extensions during the pandemic as “insurance” against future unknown pandemic impacts and now may not need those years to be fully prepared for P&T.

Virginia Tech does not require that faculty wait until their mandatory year to be promoted. Furthermore, faculty who are being evaluated for promotion and tenure, whether in their mandatory year or in a non-mandatory year, are held to the same standards as described in each department’s or school’s expectations document (see Section 3.4.2 of the Faculty Handbook.)

If there is agreement that a faculty member has satisfied all the department’s expectations for P&T before their mandatory year, then they should be supported by their department head, chair or school director, and their department committee(s) in applying for P&T at that time. There is no requirement to wait until a faculty member’s mandatory year.

For more information on this guidance, please read the full memo on the Faculty Affairs website or visit the Promotion and Tenure page for further details. Questions may be emailed to Faculty Affairs.

Student Affairs: Call for proposals for Living-Learning Programs to launch in fall 2024

Student Affairs and the Office of Living-Learning Programs invites faculty and departments to submit a Living-Learning Program (LLP) proposal for communities that will launch at the beginning of the fall 2024 semester. LLPs are intentional communities at Virginia Tech where students make powerful connections between their academic and residential environments.

In LLPs, students integrate their intellectual life with where they live, who they live with, and how they make meaning of their university experience. LLPs are a terrific way for faculty to enact innovative pedagogy and create an environment that helps students make the most of their experience at Virginia Tech.

Faculty interested in submitting a proposal are encouraged to attend an information session where they will receive more information about LLPs, creating a proposal, and coaching resources available throughout the process. To ensure enough time to launch high quality programs, proposals must be received by November 7, 2022.

Information sessions are scheduled for the following dates and times:

Monday, October 10 (In-Person Session)
3:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ambler Johnston Senior Common Room (details will be sent following registration)
In-person registration required

Wednesday, October 19 (via Zoom)
4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Zoom registration required

Final selection notifications will be sent no later than December 1. Selected steering committees will convene beginning in January 2023.

For more information on the program or to submit a proposal, please email Jamie Penven, director of Living-Learning Programs. Additional details are also available on the LLP proposal website.

University Libraries: New guidance for making taxpayer-funded research freely available

University Libraries at Virginia Tech is closely examining guidance recently released by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) that will make taxpayer-funded research immediately available at no cost to the public. The new guidance, presented in an August 25 OSTP memo, called on all federal agencies to create policies that eliminate the current 12-month waiting period for access to articles and data of federally-funded research.

Key guidance points in the OSTP memo address the following:

  • Covers all federal agencies and departments, which is an expansion from the 20 agencies covered under the current policy.
  • Ensures that research publications are machine-readable so they’re more useful to researchers and the public through text and data mining, computational analysis, and other technologies.
  • Extends the current policy’s scope to include research articles and data, peer-reviewed book chapters, editorials, and conference proceedings.
  • Calls for underlying data of published research conclusions to be made immediately available.
  • Calls for the use of persistent identifiers for all research outputs.

The forthcoming policy changes will take effect no later than December 31, 2025. University Libraries is well positioned to fully support Virginia Tech researchers and scholars as federal agency open publishing policies are developed and implemented over the next two years.

University Libraries is a vocal advocate for increasing public access to data and research to expand and elevate the impact of Virginia Tech’s faculty and student scholarship. They maintain the university’s open scholarship repository VTechWorks and the university’s Open Data Repository.

Library faculty consistently provide workshops, consultations, and other resources on topics related to copyright, data management and sharing, open publishing support, and research impact.

For more information on the OSTP guidance and the policy changes, please read this campus notice or visit the University Libraries website.

ICYMI: Faculty invited to learn more about “Establishing Collaborations with FBRI”

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute (FBRI) at VTC is one of the nation’s fastest growing academic biomedical research enterprises and a destination for world-class researchers. The institute’s Virginia Tech scientists focus on diseases that are the leading causes of death and suffering in the United States, including brain disorders, heart disease, and cancer.

As part of its Research Development Series, the Office of Research and Innovation is hosting an event on October 4 from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. (in-person at FBRI and via Zoom) for Virginia Tech researchers interested in learning more about FBRI’s mission, portfolio, and how to take advantage of opportunities for collaborative teamwork.

The in-person session will be held at Riverside 4, Room G101 A/B in Roanoke and registration is required. Transportation to FBRI will be provided via shuttle leaving the Blacksburg campus at 11:00 a.m. and returning at approximately 4:15 p.m. Lunch will be served at FBRI at 12:15 p.m. Faculty may also register to attend virtually via Zoom.

The Research Development Series is designed to help faculty in their journey to increase the scope and impact of their research, creativity, and innovation portfolio. With events focused on different facets of sponsored research, from sponsor-specific perspectives to how to work with partners, this webinar series is intended to answer researchers' biggest questions and enlighten scholars at every step in their career.

For more information on this and other Research and Innovation events, please visit their Events and Programs website.

Additional Resources and Updates

If you have comments or recommendations for how we can improve the Weekly Communications Update or suggestions for specific information and topics that should be shared with faculty, staff, and academic program personnel, please provide them through this Google form or email Provost Communications.

Please visit VT Ready and the Provost’s website frequently for new and updated university information. All members of the campus community should also read their VTx Daily email for further important updates, notices, and resources.