Delta College: Faculty Investing in Faculty Investment Teams

A professional development activity has brought together over 70 Delta College faculty each fall and winter semester for the past five years. The college’s Faculty Investment Teams (FIT) are small groups of instructors who invest in the success of their students by learning about, implementing, and discussing Delta’s four institutional investments: creating community, having conversations, supporting student success, and practicing situational fairness.

Teams of four to six faculty are identified within the first month of each semester. They are grouped by meeting day/time availability, Zoom or face-to-face meeting requests, and online or face-to-face teaching focus preferences. They are, then, placed in cross-disciplinary teams. The groups, led by one or two faculty facilitators, meet once every two weeks for eight to ten weeks. Each meeting is preceded by an email with information about the investment to be discussed and resources to prepare group members for the upcoming discussion, including open-ended questions related to that particular area of emphasis. Some teams choose to begin discussing the investment beforehand via these emails. One faculty member noted, “It was so nice to get the chance to know and talk teaching with colleagues outside of my discipline. I really appreciated the prepared email language to guide discussions.”

FIT meetings are safe spaces for faculty to discuss each investment and ways they are putting them into practice, share any challenges they may have encountered, and agree on a challenge they want to practice addressing in upcoming classes. The following meeting starts with mini reports about the challenge activities, then participants dive into the next investment. Teams meet four times, with an optional fifth meeting to make up for a meeting cancellation or, more commonly, to extend the conversation about an investment.

Building and Maintaining FIT

FIT is maintained through the following efforts. First, Delta’s leadership endorses this continuous development offering, as participation in a team fulfills the college’s request that faculty engage in belonging, equity, diversity, and inclusion work or a project each year. The Vice President of Instruction and Learning Services provides funds to support FIT, including printing costs for advertising posters, investment bookmarks, and an annual celebration lunch for all participants. These funds also covered the Delta College FIT faculty presenters’ fees and expenses for the League’s Innovations Conference in March 2026.

Second, new full-time faculty are required to participate. All new faculty enroll in a year-long professional development course—Best Practices in Teaching and Learning. One of the requirements of the course is to join a FIT team during the winter semester. Many faculty choose to continue as participants and/or engage as facilitators after the initial requirement. Jerrard Johnson, a newer faculty member and now a FIT co-leader said,

I was required to participate in FIT as a new faculty. I was so blown away by my FIT facilitator and the conversations I was having with other faculty across disciplines that I wanted to share what I learned and lead a group of faculty to help them the same way my first FIT group helped me.

Third, the college has active adjunct faculty participation because of the college’s efforts to include them and affirm their involvement. Delta offers adjunct faculty a $35 stipend for each hour of professional development they participate in, with a maximum of 20 hours per academic year. Team meetings also offer these faculty a form of casual mentoring, which they often mention as something they appreciate about FIT. Here is one adjunct faculty member’s perspective:

As a new adjunct faculty member, this was extremely helpful for me. Making connections with other faculty in different disciplines was really nice. Plus, I never felt like an adjunct. There was no difference between full-time and adjunct, which I appreciated.

A full-time faculty member commented as follows about teaming up with a new adjunct faculty member: “We all agreed it was a highlight of the semester to meet and share. It was good to get a new adjunct's perspective on training and expectations, and to be able to answer questions and encourage her.”

Fourth, Delta uses targeted advertising to attract faculty. During pre-semester meeting days, FIT leaders are available in common areas to invite faculty to sign up for the upcoming session. We also send out information and invitations via email listservs and our faculty center newsletter. Additionally, we ask those who are signing up to recommend someone else for us to invite.

Finally, we use Google Forms to collect data for continuous improvement. Faculty inform us of what has worked, what has not worked, and what changes they would like to see in the FIT meetings. Based on survey results, we initiated online-only focused teams and added AI-specific questions related to each of the investments. Conveniently, these forms also serve as attendance tracking mechanisms for our new full-time faculty requirement and adjunct faculty stipends.

Alex Goudas and Janet Alexander discuss faculty investments.

FIT Participant Feedback

These comments exemplify faculty participant sentiments:

• “I thought it was extremely helpful to have conversations with faculty who are facing the same struggles that I am facing. It provided a place to vent frustrations and learn new techniques to overcome challenges.”
• “I learned so much from the members of my group! Everyone was engaged, willing to share experiences, and just overall insightful and helpful!”
• “The open discussions were wonderful. It was very beneficial to see that other faculty from other divisions share some of the same issues and frustrations that I have.”
• “I don't think anything could really improve the FIT experience. I loved the group interactions, the exchanging of ideas, and having a safe space to discuss ideas and concepts as professors.”
• “I loved this experience so much and will do a FIT group again if I can!! It was so beneficial and gave me a lot of insight into how to be a successful instructor moving forward.”             

Benefits of FIT

As faculty leaders, we hope that sharing our FIT process and experience may inspire others to implement this professional development model at their institutions. In a post-COVID world, in which so many courses are offered online, there are fewer faculty readily available in person for office or hallway conversations. At Delta College, we believe that faculty still need regular opportunities to share what is happening in their classrooms and to receive real-time feedback from their peers.

Faculty Investment Teams provide Delta College faculty opportunities to discuss current classroom challenges and successes, to be inspired to try something new, and to share results with willing colleagues. About 60 percent of FIT faculty participants, both full- and part-time, have taken part more than once. Faculty recognize that this is not a one-and-done type of professional development experience, as each semester they are paired with different faculty who have varied perspectives and unique experiences to offer to the team. Our faculty value this. We believe faculty at other community colleges would as well.

Click here to read a related League for Innovation occasional paper titled Innovation in Action: A Belonging and Inclusion Approach to Onboarding New Faculty (July 2025), by Betheen Glady-Teschendorf, Angela Trabalka, and Beth Kelch.

Lead image: Faculty leaders and members of the EDU 390 course celebrate the conclusion of their first year.

Janet Alexander is Professor, English; Beth Kelch is Professor, Mathematics; and Jerrard Johnson is Assistant Professor, Communication, at Delta College in University Center, Michigan.

Opinions expressed in Member Spotlight are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the League for Innovation in the Community College.