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Pack Hacks for Faculty: Getting Started as a New Faculty Member at NC State

New Faculty Orientation

Welcome back to Pack Hacks for Faculty. Each month, a member of the NC State faculty will provide quick tips, advice and other insight to facilitate your teaching, research, scholarship or engagement activities. If you are interested in making a submission for a future Pack Hacks for Faculty, please review our submission guidelines and contact provost-communications@ncsu.edu if you have questions.

This month, Diane Chapman, director of the Office of Faculty Development and a teaching professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy and Human Development, gives insight into finding success as a new faculty member at NC State.

Getting Started as a New Faculty Member at NC State

Diane Chapman

Diane Chapman Beginning work with a new employer always involves a learning curve, and NC State is no different. As a new faculty member you are presented with quite a bit of information in a short period of time.

To help with the information overload, the Office of Faculty Development has assembled checklists that act as a curated set of items aimed at different points in a faculty member’s career. “Checklist: Getting Started at NC State” is specifically geared to new faculty, although others who have been here longer may find it useful.

The checklist recommends attending orientations at the university level, along with any that are offered by your college and department (these have already occurred for this year). Faculty orientations usually cover a variety of topics, including teaching and scholarship resources, promotion and tenure resources, and information about your roles and responsibilities at NC State.  

While the university orientation addresses information that is applicable to all faculty, your college orientation will cover information specific to your college and possibly department. You should also attend orientations offered by the NC State Onboarding Center and Human Resources. Here, you will learn about important aspects of your employment such as benefits and retirement. Additional orientations that also may be of great interest, depending on your specific faculty roles and responsibilities, are offered by the Office of Research and Innovation and by the NCSU Libraries.

The checklist also includes practical tips such as where to apply for a parking permit, how to review and update your campus directory listing, how to access the campus calendar, and a reminder to review all of the essential information found in MyPack Portal. OFD also has a plethora of technology support services that can make your job as a new faculty member easier, such as essential information about how to use your Google Suite of tools and how to set up two-factor authentication.

A new website is also available that brings together faculty-related items from departments and units across campus. Faculty Central is a one-stop shop for information and tools distributed across the vast ecosystem of NC State websites.

Finally, you will want to review NC State’s campus emergency alert services — here, you can have campus WolfAlerts sent to your phone via text. Another section of the checklist is dedicated to those who will be teaching, as this is often one of the first roles for many new faculty members.

You can access a printable version of the Getting Started Checklist and can always contact the Office of Faculty Development, where we will do our best to point you to the information you need.

Diane Chapman is the director of the Office of Faculty Development and a teaching professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy and Human Development in the College of Education. She can be reached at ddchapma@ncsu.edu and is on Twitter at @DianeDChapman.

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