CAT FooD

If you grew up reading Choose Your Own Adventure books like I did, you remember the opening line. Every single book started the same way: You are the hero of this adventure. Not a character the author invented. Not someone you were following from a safe distance. You. The book handed you the story and told you to drive.

Most job postings don't work that way. They're written like traditional novels: the plot is already determined, the role is already defined, and the search process is really just casting — finding the right person to play a part that someone else wrote. There's nothing wrong with that model. It works. It's how CAT+FD has always structured our Faculty-in-Residence positions, but this time around, we decided to try something different.

This time, you write the next chapter.

What's Different

The new Faculty-in-Residence position does not have a predetermined area of focus. That's a significant departure from how this position has worked in the past. Previous FIRs were appointed to support a specific programmatic need that CAT+FD had already identified — New Faculty Support, Service-Learning, Part-time Faculty Support — a focus area we chose in advance and then found the right person to lead.

This appointment inverts that. We are inviting applicants to propose an area of faculty development they are already passionate about, already engaged with, and genuinely well-positioned to support. CAT+FD will then shape the responsibilities of the appointment around the successful candidate's proposal.

What We're Hoping to Hear About

We're genuinely open on this. The call for applications names a few possible directions — artificial intelligence in teaching and learning, faculty mentoring and peer support, student mentoring and advising as pedagogy, grant writing and management — but those are merely examples. They're areas that have come up in our recent conversations, not a ceiling on what we're willing to consider.

What we're actually looking for is a proposal that identifies a real need in the Xavier faculty community and makes a credible case for why you are the right person to address it. That means thinking seriously about what knowledge or experience you're bringing, what programming might realistically look like given the scope of the position, and who across campus would benefit.

The position is a 12.5% appointment with one course release per year, for a three-year term with the option to renew. It's designed to bring a faculty colleague into the work of CAT+FD in a meaningful, sustained way. The person we appoint will spend a few hours a week in the Center, attend staff meetings and our summer planning retreat, and take the lead on developing and running programming in their proposed area.

Who Should Apply

The formal requirements are what you'd expect:

• at least three years of full-time teaching at Xavier;
• a record of engagement with CAT+FD;
• evidence of scholarly activity; and
• a collegial reputation that makes cross-disciplinary collaboration natural rather than forced.

Tenure is preferred, but not required.

But I want to speak past the formal requirements for a moment, because I think the person we're looking for might not immediately see themselves in a list of qualifications.

In Choose Your Own Adventure, the books were always careful to remind you that you weren't just in the story — you were driving it. That required a specific kind of reader: someone curious enough to explore, confident enough to make a choice, and self-aware enough to know something about what kind of adventure they wanted to go on.

That's who I'm hoping applies for this position. Not necessarily the person who has always wanted a faculty development role, but the person who has been quietly doing faculty development work for years without anyone giving it that name; the colleague other people come to when they're trying to figure out how AI is changing their classroom; the one who's been running an informal reading group; the person who thinks deeply about how we mentor graduate students or advise undergraduates through hard moments; the grant writer everyone asks for help and who's never had the support or the platform to do that work at scale.

If any of that sounds like you, we'd like to hear from you.

How You Can Apply

To apply, submit a letter of application that includes a detailed proposal describing your proposed area of focus, along with letters of support from your Department Head or Division Chair and your College Dean. We're accepting applications on a rolling basis throughout the summer, with a final decision before the start of the Fall 2026 semester.

If you have questions before applying, or if you want to talk through an idea before you've fully committed to a direction, reach out. That kind of conversation is part of what this process is supposed to feel like.

There are a lot of possible endings to this story. We're hoping you'll help us write a good one.