By David DeKunder
Jenny Moore, clinical professor of communication at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, is on track to earn her certification as a faculty success coach and use the knowledge and skills she gained through her training to assist University faculty members in achieving their professional goals.
Moore is working towards her certification from the International Coaching Federation (ICF), the leading global organization dedicated to the training and development of professional coaches. She is scheduled to fulfill her certification requirements with an examination this summer, completing two years of training.
Once the certification process is completed, Moore will be classified as an associate certified coach under ICF standards, specializing in providing professional career coaching to faculty and staff members in the higher education field at A&M-San Antonio or other colleges and universities in the U.S. that request it.
“What I’m training to do is coach other faculty in the context of higher education,” Moore said. “That might mean helping them to be better instructors, helping them balance workload/life issues, and other career planning topics for tenure and tenured track faculty. By completing the requirements for each training course, I learned the skills needed to help faculty achieve their goals in a variety of settings.”
In addition, Moore is a senior faculty fellow for the Center for Academic Innovation at A&M-San Antonio. The center promotes initiatives to advance student-centered teaching and scholarly activities related to teaching, learning and technology integration through partnerships with university faculty members.
Through the knowledge, skills and training she has gained from her ICF certification, Moore will help develop faculty fellowships at A&M-San Antonio through the Center for Academic Innovation, which would allow faculty members to research student-centered teaching. Moore said these fellowships would allow faculty members to “take a deeper dive” into how they are teaching in the classroom and whether it’s effective in helping students learn while allowing them to publish and share their research with other faculty.
“The life of a faculty member is really busy, really stressful and geared around meeting the needs of students,” Moore said. “It’s really hard to stay innovative, fresh and creative when you are just going into a classroom and grading. But with the Center for Academic Innovation’s fellowships, faculty can say, ‘Someone is really paying attention to the work I’m doing in the classroom. It keeps everyone energized and fresh, and that helps the students.”
Moore has taught at A&M-San Antonio for 15 years and is a founding faculty member in the Department of Sociology and Communication and is the founding director of Jaguar Student Media.
“When I became a full clinical professor, I saw a need to help the faculty be more empowered,” Moore said. “We risk having to lose talented, hard-working, really engaging faculty if they don’t feel appreciated, well-compensated or encouraged.”
“When I became a full clinical professor, I saw a need to help the faculty be more empowered,” Moore said. “We risk having to lose talented, hard-working, really engaging faculty if they don’t feel appreciated, well-compensated or encouraged.”
Dr. Diane Gavin, executive director of the Center for Academic Innovation, said Moore has conducted three sessions for faculty during the spring semester which have focused on work-life balance topics and will conduct presentations this summer for new faculty members on getting acclimated at A&M-San Antonio.
Gavin said having an ICF-certified coach such as Moore will be beneficial for faculty members.
“Having anybody who is certified by ICF is important,” Gavin said. “It means that faculty can trust the advice she gives because it’s coming from a respected source. The entire institution benefits when we have someone who has that kind of training and that kind of skill. It just makes the world a little bit better for everybody.”
