The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Agile Faculty: Practical Strategies for Managing Research, Service, and Teaching, Rebecca Pope-Ruark

Agile Faculty: Practical Strategies for Managing Research, Service, and Teaching

Rebecca Pope-Ruark

Digital tools have long been a transformative part of academia, enhancing the classroom and changing the way we teach. Yet there is a way that academia may be able to benefit more from the digital revolution: by adopting the project management techniques used by software developers.

Agile work strategies are a staple of the software development world, developed out of the need to be flexible and responsive to fast-paced change at times when "business as usual" could not work. These techniques call for breaking projects into phases and short-term goals, managing assignments collectively, and tracking progress openly.

Agile Faculty is a comprehensive roadmap for scholars who want to incorporate Agile practices into all aspects of their academic careers, be it research, service, or teaching. Rebecca Pope-Ruark covers the basic principles of Scrum, one of the most widely used models, and then through individual chapters shows how to apply that framework to everything from individual research to running faculty committees to overseeing student class work. Practical and forward-thinking, Agile Faculty will help readers not only manage their time and projects but also foster productivity, balance, and personal and professional growth.

Book Details

  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • Publish Date: Nov 27th, 2017
  • Pages: 176
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.90in - 6.00in - 0.70in - 0.75lb
  • EAN: 9780226463155
  • Categories: Schools - Levels - HigherReference

About the Author

Pope-Ruark, Rebecca: - Rebecca Pope-Ruark is associate professor of English at Elon University, where she coordinates the Professional Writing and Rhetoric program as well as the Design Thinking Studio in Social Innovation immersive semester pilot program.

Praise for this book

"Agile Faculty offers a rare thing: a fresh perspective on academic work. Pope-Ruark shares ideas both practical and inspiring, from sprints to scrum boards and the Zeigarnik Effect. Faculty, staff, and students alike can benefit."--Bryan Alexander, author of The New Digital Storytelling
"Building solutions that advance society requires us to flip our current engagement models on their head, whether it be how to execute research projects or teach courses. Taking a pragmatic approach, Pope-Ruark outlines steps that faculty members can use to incorporate principles of Agile development into their research, teaching, mentoring, and service commitments. Agile Faculty will be a refreshing read for scholars, whether they are entering the faculty ranks or are seasoned academics. I encourage you experiment with the concepts outlined in Agile Faculty."--Kevin C. Desouza, Foundation Professor, Arizona State University