Emerson College is committed to the ongoing professional development of its faculty. A critical component of an effective faculty development effort is a mentoring program that helps faculty members succeed and prosper as scholars, creators, educators, and good citizens of the institution and community.

What is neXus?

Emerson’s “mutual mentoring” program, named neXus, provides one-to-one mentoring for full-time faculty, both tenure-line and term, as well as a variety of workshops open to all faculty. Designed around individual faculty members (mentees) centered in a hub that connects them with multiple mentoring partners (mentors), it is a dynamic model that provides multiple learning opportunities for both mentee and mentor partners.  The goals of our program are to help faculty members continuously develop their skills as educators and researchers, to broaden their professional development opportunities and in the case of tenure-line faculty, to attain tenure and promotion successfully. Collectively, we want to help our faculty succeed and prosper as scholars, creators, educators, and good citizens of the institution and community. 

Mutual mentoring is confidential, benefits both partners, and is not evaluative. To get started, mentees have been matched with a senior department faculty mentor and often with a faculty colleague outside their department, as well.  This formal mentoring relationship usually lasts until the third-year review, but may be changed before that time at the request of the mentee or mentor. Other mentor partners are selected by the mentee and may include external professional colleagues, peers, and other faculty colleagues here as well as members of the DPTCs.

Mentoring Activities

Faculty workshops are offered throughout the year, and have included teaching workshops on digital pedagogy, assessment of student learning, and issues at the intersection of students’ emotional lives and their academic work; workshops on grant-seeking for research and creative scholarship; mentor and mentee lunches; and workshops on navigating institutional processes for faculty reviews.

Eligibility

All full-time faculty members are eligible to participate. Affiliated faculty members are welcome to attend any programs but will not be matched with mentors.

Faculty Mentoring at Emerson College

Mentees

In the Mutual Mentoring model, mentees work with their department chairs and school deans to design their own mentoring “hub” of individuals and opportunities that best suits their needs.

Questions

For questions, please contact brooke_knight [at] emerson.edu (Brooke Knight), your department chair, or your school dean.