Welcome to 2025 at VCU!

Dear VCU Faculty,
As we embark on the new year, 2025, I am thrilled to share the exciting progress we are making at VCU. Our enrollment is increasing, sponsored research is growing, and our national reputation and rankings are rising. None of this would be possible without your hard work and dedication.
This year, we are committed to advancing a culture of care and academic excellence for our faculty. This means understanding the challenges and opportunities you encounter, finding smart and intentional ways to support your growth in research, art-making, teaching, and service, and ensuring VCU remains a top destination for talented professors.
Listening to Faculty Members
Our journey begins with listening to you. This spring, we are partnering with Harvard University’s Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) to conduct the Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey. This confidential survey, starting in February, will provide valuable insights into your experiences and allow us to compare our campus with peer institutions nationwide. We aim for a 50% participation rate, surpassing the typical 44% response rate since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, we will conduct a Faculty Retention and Exit Survey during the 2025-2026 academic year to learn from those who have moved on to other institutions. This will help us understand how to better retain our talented faculty.
Helping Grow Faculty Careers
While we await the survey results, we are already implementing strategies to support your career growth. Our “Expanding Network of Expert Scholars” initiative will enable assistant and associate professors to showcase their work and foster new connections and collaborations, inviting leading researchers in their field to campus.
We are also launching the first Convergence Labs @VCU to advance transdisciplinary research and curricular innovation, with the conversion of some former iCubed clusters and new labs focused on AI and mental health. Our commitment to community engagement remains strong, as we work to earn reclassification as a Carnegie Community Engaged University. From VCU’s beginning, community engagement has been in our DNA and offers us avenues to leverage our research efforts to help individuals, drive economic impact, and support thriving communities.
Rewarding Faculty Excellence
We are investing more in recognizing faculty excellence. Nominations are now open for the 2025 VCU Distinguished Faculty Awards, with cash rewards ranging from $3,500 to $5,000. We are also entering the third year of VCU’s National and International Recognition Awards (NIRA), which honor faculty for exceptional scholarly and research accomplishments. And we will begin a new NIRA-style award for term faculty members, focused on teaching excellence, based on recommendations from the Teaching Effectiveness Committee.
Thank you for your dedication and contributions to VCU. Together, we will continue to be unstoppable!
Best regards,
Fotis Sotiropoulos, Ph.D.
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs