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Christel Lutz says that she will use her chair to increase support for academics in their role as teachers and more broadly, in building meaningful and sustainable career trajectories. “Inclusiveness is key in faculty development. We know that people in different stages of their careers have different needs. And clearly, one’s academic field and expertise matter a great deal in terms of what someone brings to their field and their students and in terms of what type of support they need. But so do personal circumstances and background. Making the university a home for a larger group of people is necessary if we want to increase the impact that can be made by the institution”.

On the role of universities in modern society, Lutz stresses that universities must be open, free places where we can engage in academic conversations and research into topics that are of importance to the wider society. She believes that we have to get better at finding ways to engage with a larger public in determining what those important questions are and how we want to engage in them, which is why the open science movement is so important. At the same time, Lutz recognizes that the issues that we face are being understood in different ways than in the past: “Look at the Gaza conflict and how it's impacting universities across the world. That is not just a measure of how horrific this crisis is, but it is also a measure of how this generation of students regard their educational institution. They see it as a place of learning, a place that will change them, but also as a place that they ought to change, in turn, and I think they are right to expect this.” Lutz points out that at UCU, where students determine their own academic curriculum, positionality matters: “We are asking our students to think about, to really think hard about what their position is regarding a certain issue. If you are engaging with it, you can't, the way I was trained as a quantitative researcher, put objectivity on a pedestal so to speak, as if as if it's something you can or should always attain. Different perspectives matter deeply, and this has consequences for the way you organize discovery and the exchange of knowledge that are profound and at times really shocking to the system”.

The current budget cuts planned by the new Dutch government will impact our work and lives at the university, which, according to Lutz, will bring more urgency to inclusive faculty development. She considers UCU a good home for her chair, as she finds herself always returning to the language of the liberal arts. “Whether we're facing budget cuts or complex conversations about Gaza, debating the role of internationalization in higher education or the impact of GenAi, each time we engage with these new challenges or external threats, it's helpful to remind ourselves of the importance of a conversation, of two people in a room learning from one another. Those moments can be sources of energy and new ideas, even sources of hope, as much as they are sources of knowledge. As a psychologist, I cannot think of anything that is more important or interesting”. Talking about her work, Lutz hopes that the entire UCU community will feel ownership of the process of faculty development, or at least curiosity. “I think this is about all of us. Liberal arts colleges have often been characterized as test kitchens for innovation in education, and so is UCU. We form a small but very strong college community that is incredibly rich in ideas.”

Lutz describes how she joined UCU twenty years ago after completing her PhD in the United States because she wanted to return to the Netherlands and build a career centred on teaching. At that time no teaching-focussed routes to full professorships were available in the Netherlands and “having witnessed my American friends experience the pressures of going through their tenure tracks, I wasn’t the least bit sorry about closing off that path for myself”. Her interest and ultimately career shift towards faculty development began when she, together with other UCU colleagues, started organizing workshops for teachers to help them develop their teaching, addressing a range of topics like interdisciplinarity and teaching across language differences and in diverse settings. “As tutors we offered so much support to our students, but I became convinced there was something lacking in the terms of the offering for our colleagues”. In 2017, Lutz was “frankly somewhat surprised by my own enthusiasm” to step on a track that would ultimately lead to a professorship in education, the senior fellow program at the Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning. Reflecting on her journey, Lutz describes how she has enjoyed the creativity involved in conducting research in higher education, and how new roles in educational leadership have moved her away from her teaching tasks a bit more than she wants, saying “like anyone taking on new challenges, there’s work that goes into that which you may want to shy away from every now and then, but I believe there is real value to having a diverse group of people in leadership roles, and in the end I am just very proud that as a UCU teacher and tutor I was given these opportunities”.

In terms of her current appointment and tasks at UCU, Lutz says much will remain unchanged, at least initially, as she will continue to perform the function of Director of Education and teach at UCU. However, Lutz hopes that her new appointment will bring a clear focus to topics related to faculty development and to research in higher education. She will join the board of the Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning and is open to sitting on committees that will allow her greater scope as a proponent of the liberal arts and inclusive faculty development, but also to help UCU colleagues apply for grants, especially as some are open only to teams that include a professor. “I hope that UCU can continue to be a place where we show leadership and highlight the critical and often undervalued work that faculty members with high teaching and mentoring loads are engaged in, and I want to use my new appointment towards this aim”.