About the Next Generation Program (Next Gen)
Traditional faculty hiring at Georgia State University has often been primarily focused upon the important task of building disciplinary-specific scholarly depth and meeting departmental instructional needs. College Deans, Institute Directors and Department Chairs have made internal decisions regarding how best to allocate their faculty lines to meet these critical needs, typically focusing on the hiring of junior tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions.
The Next Generation Program (“Next Gen”) brought critical changes to this line of thinking – crossing disciplines and departments.
Next Gen was the successor to the very successful Second Century Initiative (2CI), which brought more than 80 new faculty positions to the university between 2011 and 2015. Next Gen’s aim was to build strength around core and innovative research and scholarly themes that have strategic importance to the university – which it did, successfully. The initiative added new faculty strength to maintain the university’s growing scholarly trajectory, with a diverse cadre of faculty, to engage with our diverse community of students.
The programs’ interdisciplinary nature have yielded innovative centers and institutes. Together, 2CI and Next Gen have brought scholars and researchers in the top of their fields to Georgia State. In collaboration with existing Georgia State faculty, they been instrumental in the formation of exciting, impactful research centers and institutes, including the Institute for Biomedical Sciences, the Transcultural Violence and Extremism initiative, the Center for Research into Interpersonal Violence, the Legal Analytics Lab, and more. 2CI and Next Gen faculty have also continued to bolster centers which existed prior to their arrival, including the Center for Law, Health and Society, and the Neuroscience Institute.
Read a retrospective about Next Gen, with results and impacts, by clicking here.
Differences between Next Gen and the Next Generation of Faculty Initiative
It should be noted that these are two separate initiatives.
The Next Generation Program is a strategic faculty hiring initiative overall, centered around interdisciplinary themes.
The Next Generation of Faculty initiative has specific ties to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts for faculty at GSU, and not just in research/scholarship clusters. It takes its name from the Commission for the Next Generation of Faculty. This initiative focuses on all faculty in terms of diversity, equity and inclusion in not only recruitment, but also retention and engagement of faculty from diverse backgrounds. For more information about this initiative and its implementation, visit https://provost.gsu.edu/commission-report/.