What is NCFDD?

NCFDD is an independent professional development, training, and mentoring community of faculty, postdocs, & graduate students. It provides a variety of virtual programs and resources, most of which are included with our campus institutional membership.

• A comprehensive webinar library with new live webinars offered each month. Topics include research, grant funding, book writing, teaching, leadership, and self-care
• A private faculty development community that allows you to connect with peers at other campuses
• A weekly Monday Motivator newsletter offering tips to thrive in academe, and Wednesday Wisdom conversation thread that crowd-sources solutions from a community of thousands of academics
• 14-Day Writing Challenges to experiment with consistent daily writing
• Short videos focused on various skill development

Note: most NCFDD links will not work until your account is activated

Curated NCFDD Webinars

Below is a curated selection of NCFDD resources to help you get started. Please browse the events calendar, and register for any upcoming webinars that interest you. You can review the webinar library and check out the previous webinar recordings.

Strategic Planning

• Every Summer Needs a Plan
• Every Career Chapter Needs a Plan
• How to Align Your Time with Your Priorities
• Mastering Academic Time Management
• Reclaiming Our Time: AI and Academic Productivity
• AI in Academia: Discussing Opportunities and Challenges
• Navigating Uncertainty in Higher Ed: Strategies for Faculty
• Maximizing Your Sabbatical: An Integrated Approach to Purposeful Planning, Reflection, and Re-entry

Research

• How to Develop a Daily Writing Practice
• Being Agile in Uncertain Times: Scrum Project Management for Faculty
• Building a Successful Research Laboratory: Creating a Home for Science and Collaboration (June 9, 2026)
• How to Peer Review a Journal Article in No Time (July 23, 2026)
• Framing and Maintaining Your Research Agenda
• Navigating Uncertainty in Higher Ed: Research Funding Strategies
• Pivot to Public Writing
• Power Your Research: Academic Branding

Teaching

• Beyond Course Evaluations: Documenting Teaching for Tenure & Promotion
• Ten UDL-Aligned Strategies for Supporting Students with ADHD
• Student-Centered Mentoring: Bridging the Gap between Faculty and Students
• Executive Function and Student Success: Small Teaching Shifts That Matter
• The AIs Go Marching On: Finding Our Way with AI in Education

Work-Life Balance

• Planning for Rest and Recovery: An Agile End-of-Year Reflection
• The Art of Saying No
• The Art of Saying “Yes”: Seeking and Securing Opportunities in Academia
• How to Manage Stress, Rejection & the Haters in Your Midst
• Rethinking Self Care
• Managing Stress by Shifting Self-Talk

Mentoring

• Cultivating Your Network of Mentors, Sponsors & Collaborators
• Mentorship: Efficient and Effective Practices
• Mentoring Up for Faculty
• Rethinking Faculty Mentoring: What Institutions Can Do Differently
• A Constellation Mentorship Model for Onboarding New Assistant Professors (August 11, 2026)

Leadership

• Academic Leadership: When, Why, and How to Step Up
• Creating a Culture of Support for All Faculty (including non-tenure track faculty)
• Department Chairs
  • What I Wished I Would Have Known about Being an Interim Leader
  • What I Wished I Would Have Known about Transitioning to Department Chair
  • Strengthening Your Department Chair Playbook: Spotlight on Faculty Development Strategies
  • From the Chair's Perspective: Insights on Academic Leadership: It's All About the Relationships
  • From the Chair's Perspective: Insights on Academic Leadership: Little Fires Everywhere
• Cultivating Structural and Systemic Change for Mid-Career Faculty Advancement
• Supporting Faculty Well-Being: Transformative, Accessible, And Impactful Approaches
• Improving Faculty Well-Being: A 3-Level Strategy to Reduce Burnout and Increase Retention
• How Investing in Faculty Well-Being Is Investing in Your Institution
• The State of Faculty Development: Bridging the Faculty Support Gap
• Rewriting the Retention Equation: Strategies to Reward, Recognize, and Retain Faculty
• Navigating Uncertainty in Higher Ed: Approaches for Academic Leaders
• What I Wished I Would Have Known as an Academic Leader and University Administrator

Resources by Faculty Type/Administrator

• Resources for Professional Track & Lecturer Faculty
• Resources for Early Career Faculty
  
  • Faculty Success Program (separate registration)
• Resources for Mid-career faculty
  
  • Post-Tenure Pathfinders (separate registration)
• Resources for Administrators
  
  • Department Chair Success Program (separate registration)

Activate Your NCFDD Account

To activate your institutional membership,

• Go to the NCFDD web page
• Choose "California State University, Sacramento"
• Select "Activate My Membership"
• Complete the registration form by using your Saclink email account
• Go to your Sacramento State email and click "Activate Account" in the confirmation email

NCFDD Resources & Programming Demo (Recording)

Sacramento State hosted an NCFDD resource and program demonstration on May 20, 2026. In this 45-minute webinar, Frank Sesso (NCFDD Partnership Success Director) introduced the range of virtual programs and resources NCFDD offers and share how to maximize the benefits of your institutional membership. Please see the webinar recording below and the Webinar Slides.

Watch Webinar Recording

Questions? Broken Links?

If you have any questions or comments or find any broken hyperlinks, please contact Young-Im Lee (2026-27 Faculty Success Fellow & Associate Professor of Political Science, young-im.lee@csus.edu).

If you are experiencing any technical issues with the membership or have additional questions you can contact the NCFDD at membership@facultydiversity.org.