Phase One
Years 1–3
Establish & Build
- Research agenda
- Funding
- Leadership identity
- Institutional navigation
- Professional relationships
- Research-team infrastructure
Our Approach
How the Institute works: one integrated developmental system.
A multi-year career model, cohort-based development, an Afrocentric framework for emotional and cultural intelligence, and evaluation that measures what actually matters.
A Multi-Year Career Model
Faculty careers develop over years. Faculty development should too.
The Institute follows the arc of an academic career across three developmental phases — from first appointment through institutional stewardship.
Phase Two
Years 4–6
Position & Advance
- Tenure readiness
- Promotion strategy
- Major grants
- Research visibility
- Sponsorship
- Campus politics
- Research leadership
Phase Three
Post-Tenure
Influence & Lead
- Associate-to-Full strategy
- Research leadership
- Centres and laboratories
- Institutional leadership
- Mentorship
- Stewardship
- Recruit
- Establish
- Build
- Advance
- Promote
- Lead
- Steward
Institutions can begin with an initial three-year cohort partnership and continue with scholars through subsequent career stages — so development never stops at the first milestone.
Cohort-Based Development
Cohort-based hiring deserves cohort-based development.
Recruiting Black faculty together without maintaining developmental infrastructure can leave scholars dispersed across departments and institutional cultures. The Institute turns a faculty hiring cohort into a sustained professional and research community.
The cohort becomes more than a training group. It becomes a professional network, learning community, research network, source of mutual sponsorship, and retention infrastructure.
- Individual Coaching
- Peer Advisory Community
- Research & Grant Labs
- Leadership Development
- Tenure & Promotion Strategy
- Senior Scholar Network
- Institutional Navigation
- Research Leadership
- Annual Convening
- Mentorship & Sponsorship
BLKEQ® Black Emotional Intelligence
An Afrocentric framework for understanding academic life.
BLKEQ® is a distinct Afrocentric framework that understands emotional experience as relational, cultural, historical, embodied, communal, and systemic.
01
Mindset
The frames through which scholars interpret themselves, their work, and the institution.
02
Feelset
The emotional landscape of academic life — named, honoured, and worked with rather than suppressed.
03
Skillset
The practised capacities: communication, feedback, conflict navigation, and influence.
04
Healset
The restoration and sustainability practices that make a long academic career possible.
Question One
What is happening within me?
Question Two
What is happening around me?
This distinction matters. The Institute develops individual capacity without assuming that every challenge experienced by Black faculty is an individual problem. Faculty learn to develop themselves while also reading and navigating the institutional systems surrounding them.
Measuring What Matters
Evaluation across five outcome areas
Because academic careers develop over years, Institute evaluation is longitudinal rather than limited to participant satisfaction after individual workshops.
Research
- Grants
- Publications
- Research partnerships
- Labs
- Research teams
Career
- Retention
- Successful reviews
- Tenure
- Associate Professor promotion
- Full Professor promotion
Leadership
- Supervisory effectiveness
- Mentoring
- Conflict navigation
- Institutional influence
- EQ/CQ development
Faculty Experience
- Belonging
- Sponsorship
- Workload sustainability
- Institutional navigation
- Career confidence
Institutional Conditions
- Barriers identified
- Research support
- Retention practices
- Mentoring systems
- Leadership opportunities
Begin the Partnership
Recruiting Black scholars is the beginning.
Let's build the conditions for them to remain, advance, lead, and flourish.