An Innovative Faculty Intervention at HBCUs: Self Care, Writing as a Practice and Building Community

The HBCU STEM Undergraduate Success (STEM-US) Research Center, funded in 2020 by the National Science Foundation, was created to gain an understanding of what types of academic interventions work at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and why they work. For all of us in higher education, teaching, research, and scholarly production have been greatly impacted by COVID-19. The response to the new normal has been particularly taxing for faculty at HBCUs. Recent public displays of blatant anti-black sentiment not only adds to our own stress load but has served to exacerbate the emotional needs of our students. The additional strain of the pandemic response added to already stressed organizational systems at HBCU’s. All of which has compelled HBCU faculty to re-examine how we relate to our work, our families and ourselves. The value of ‘sharing our stories’ lies within the deep relationships fostered among the HBCU faculty that are in partnership with the STEM US Center’s research arm, the Analytic Hub. By supporting Communities of Practice, the Hub provides the opportunity to share information on aspects of the Science of Teaching and Learning that are applicable to HBCUs in an open and transparent manner. One of the Hub’s faculty development initiatives is called the CareFull Scholars Program which seeks to encourage adoption of practices that provide exceptional productivity while at the same time emphasizing enhanced health and well-being. This model is based on the premise that we can be scholarly and productive in a healthy and generative way while also centering self-care and collaborative relationships within our working lives. This paper is a reflective account of the inauguration of the CareFull Scholars community of practice. This post-pandemic intervention for faculty productivity promoted self-care through daily writing. We learned that by creating mental, emotional, physical and technical structures of support, daily writing could be easily adopted and with accountability from a caring community be sustained over time.