Anatomy of a hospitable collaboration: academic hospitality in and for academic development

We suggest that academic hospitality may be a common, unarticulated practice in academic development. We use two nested collaborations between an academic development unit and a dental faculty to illustrate practices of academic hospitality. The collaboration changed the faculty’s culture of suitability assessment, or assessment of students’ qualifications for professional work. Nested within this collaboration, another collaboration emerged between one of the academic developers and a dental faculty member. They conducted a research study on the cultural change in the faculty as an example of how and why changes might come about in an academic culture. We contend that both collaborations are marked by academic hospitality and exemplify hospitable collaboration.