We founded Academic Advance Partners because we experienced the research-teaching divide from both sides: as faculty members navigating the tension between our passions, and as administrators working to create better conditions for faculty success. From both perspectives, we witnessed the unnecessary cost to faculty, students, and institutions, and we saw the potential when integration becomes possible. We established this company to help institutions move from fragmentation to integration through the ASCEND Institutional Excellence Model, our framework grounded in research on faculty retention and systems change.

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We meet institutions where they are through the ASCEND Institutional Excellence Model, our proprietary framework for moving from research-teaching fragmentation to integration. Some need assessment. Some need design support. Some want full partnership. All need authentic collaboration. We begin by listening to your faculty and examining your structures to understand where barriers to integration exist, because every institution is different. Together, we design systems that support integration—course design frameworks, time allocation models, recognition structures, collaboration networks—all customized to your institutional context. We partner with you during implementation through training, consultation, and adjustment, recognizing that change is iterative. Our support continues to ensure integration becomes embedded culture, not a temporary initiative. This approach works because it is grounded in research on faculty retention and success, focuses on systems rather than individuals, and maintains commitment to measurable outcomes throughout.

Learn more about the ASCEND Institutional Excellence Model

We partner with academic institutions and leaders who recognize that the research-teaching divide is not inevitable but a structural problem that can be solved. Our clients include:

• academic leaders (provosts, deans, department chairs) who see faculty struggling with competing demands and want to create supportive structures rather than ask individual faculty to work harder

• educational development professional who want to move beyond offering separate research and teaching support initiatives toward integrated support

• research administrators who recognize that research productivity improves when faculty can connect their scholarship to their teaching

• institutions committed to both research and teaching excellence and want to evaluate how well their existing structures support or undermine that dual commitment.

We believe the research-teaching divide is one of the most damaging and unnecessary structures in higher education. It diminishes faculty, shortchanges students, and undermines institutional missions.

Our work is driven by three core beliefs:

• Research and teaching are complementary activities that strengthen, rather than compete against, each other when institutions create the right conditions

• Faculty thrive when they can integrate their scholarly identity with their teaching practice, and this integration benefits everyone: faculty, students, and institutions

• Sustainable integration requires changing structures and systems, not just asking individual faculty to work harder or make impossible choices

Learn more about our guiding values.