Faculty club pop-up events spark connection and collaboration

In a world of back-to-back classes, office hours, and endless grading, finding the time as a faculty member to mingle with colleagues is difficult. A new series of Pop-up Faculty Club events is helping faculty at Virginia Tech meet new people, exchange ideas, and partake in intellectual collaborations, building a sense of community that is both social and academic. 

Faculty Affairs launched the first pop-up in the Data and Decision Sciences Building in December 2023. The mix-and-mingle event had an impressive turnout of 120 faculty and staff members, many of whom formed meaningful connections. 

“It's really this form of intellectual socializing that is so key to the success of our faculty in academia,” said Rachel Gabriele, associate vice provost for faculty affairs.

Creating the pop-ups 

Expanding on the New Faculty Socials that Faculty Affairs launched in 2016,  the pop-ups are designed to address a growing interest from faculty to have opportunities to meet and exchange ideas outside of their individual departments and colleges. Positive feedback from the gatherings confirmed the need for more faculty members to find an intellectual community beyond their departments.

Sara Thompto, a program assistant for faculty affairs, took on the task of transforming the annual new faculty socials into a Pop-Up Faculty Club — a series of gatherings that would take place multiple times a year in locations across the Blacksburg campus. “Since we don't have an actual faculty club and building space for it, we decided to start with the pop-up faculty club, which is an informal event that is meant to facilitate collaboration,” said Thompto.“People get confused by that term ‘pop-up.’ It basically just means that there's no one spot for this event. So we will pop up around campus and choose a different spot every time.”

Over the course of 2023 and 2024, Faculty Affairs brought a total of five pop-ups to locations in Blacksburg, including the Holtzman Alumni Center and the Alexander Black House. At a pop-up at the Moss Arts Center, faculty stayed well past the official end of the event to continue conversations. The lively atmosphere of these events and opportunities to build community assure the continuation of these programs. 

Making connections

One feature of these gatherings is the unique use of name tags as an icebreaker. A memorable example was when faculty guests each chose three adjectives to describe themselves; the words went on their name tags. While seeming like a minor detail, this idea turned out to offer the perfect opportunity for faculty to strike up conversations. From that initial connection, faculty began to learn more about one another and their similar interests, from research in a lab to hobbies they do on the side.  

From the first pop-up, Jennifer Hart, the department chair in history, found opportunities to connect in new ways with faculty members. “I walked away from that first event with a new connection to colleagues in CALS [the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences] who are doing work in the same country I do, and we began conversations about how we can better support graduate education and research in African countries through interdisciplinary collaborations.”

Looking ahead

In the future, Faculty Affairs organizers hope that the pop-ups become a consistent space where faculty can unwind, exchange ideas, and collaborate with one another. By building new relationships and creating a connected and collaborative academic community, they’re contributing to the university’s quest for global distinction. 

“The Faculty Pop-up Club is a great new benefit for all faculty to take some time out to socialize and to get to know faculty across the large spectrum of Virginia Tech,” said Rodney Gaines, a collegiate associate professor of human nutrition, foods, and exercise and an avid pop-up attendee.

The next pop-up will be Feb. 12 at the Moss Arts Center from 5:30-7:30 p.m. and is open to teaching and research faculty members. To register, email Thompto at sthompto@vt.edu. 

Written by Ava Barnett, a senior majoring in public relations