Thought leadership grows stronger when it is shared. Throughout the year, NLU created opportunities for faculty and staff across colleges, disciplines, and career stages to connect around the work of research, scholarship, writing, and knowledge dissemination. Together, these initiatives are working to build a university-wide community of practice—one in which colleagues learn from one another, share strategies and experiences, find potential collaborators, and make the often-invisible processes behind scholarly work more visible and accessible. HIGHLIGHTS OF 2025-26: Building a Community of Practice in Thought Leadership
Collab Lab brought more than 40 faculty together to share research interests, explore areas of common inquiry, and make connections across disciplines. A standing showcase of current thought leadership projects was created for the event. The informal “How I Got Published” series invited faculty authors to talk candidly with colleagues about the pathways behind their publications—how projects developed, how they navigated the publication process, and what they learned along the way. A panel of recent sabbatical awardees similarly created an opportunity for colleagues to hear directly from faculty about how they used dedicated time to advance significant scholarly projects and what others might learn from their experiences. Research Week provided a broader university showcase for research and scholarship, creating opportunities to share work, exchange ideas, and celebrate inquiry across NLU. Faculty also gained access to expertise beyond the university through Hanover Research professional development sessions on grant seeking and scholarly writing , strengthening practical skills for developing and disseminating their work. And through The OpEd Project’s Write to Change the World workshop , faculty explored another dimension of thought leadership: translating expertise for public audiences and contributing research-informed perspectives to conversations beyond the academy. Across these activities, the goal extends beyond any single workshop, presentation, or event. By creating regular spaces for colleagues to connect, learn, share work in progress, and learn from one another’s experience , NLU is building the relationships and shared capacity that allow a culture of thought leadership to flourish—and laying the groundwork for new collaborations, new scholarship, and new voices in the years ahead.
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