Foundations
The following characteristics define a strong faculty mentoring system:
- A “mutual mentoring” system where the mentee is at the center of a hub that connects with multiple mentoring partners, such as:
- a senior department faculty mentor,
- a faculty colleague outside their department,
- an external professional mentor,
- internal or external peer mentors, and
- a program of institution supported activities.
- The institution provides professional development and skills workshops for mentees that include grant writing, preparing for tenure and promotion, classroom skills, etc.
- A mentoring system that addresses both social-psychological support (i.e. welcome to campus, introductions, campus tour, office readiness, etc.) and career-advancement support (i.e. teaching and research development workshops, promotion and tenure guidance, etc.).
- Mentoring programs for both early-career faculty and mid/senior- career faculty.
- Coordination with existing faculty development opportunities such as internal grant opportunities, travel support for research, etc.
- The mentoring system is voluntary, informal, “no-fault,” and is not evaluative.
- Mentees select their own mentoring opportunities that best suit their goals.
- The mentoring system is not department-based, but is institution-based and relies on offices and individuals from across campus to participate.
- The mentoring system is intended to help faculty members succeed and prosper as scholars, creators, educators, and good citizens of the institution and community.
- Institution-supported mentoring opportunities address the four areas of professional development common to all faculty members: pedagogy; research and scholarship; promotion and tenure; and service to the institution and community.
Components
The following components provide an array of opportunities for mentees. A strong mentoring system may not provide all of these opportunities, but should provide many of them. A mentee may not choose to participate in all of these, but should participate in the ones that best address their own goals.
- Contact person for pre-arrival questions and assistance in securing an office and equipment, orientation information, advice on housing and transportation issues, etc.
- An orientation to introduce new faculty members to the institution’s policies, procedures, practices, organization, resources, and strategic plan.
- Readiness, skill-building opportunities for potential mentors and mentees on topics such as:
- Demystifying myths about mentoring.
- Demystifying myths about mentoring.
- Review definitions and values of mentoring.
- Discuss modes of mentoring.
- Design a mutual mentoring program that works for you.
- Identify typical stressors.
- Mentor/mentee relationships and expectations.
- Best practices of a successful mentor/mentee relationship.
- How to discuss “critical incidents.”
- How to discuss gender bias, “out-group bias,” and “solo situations”
- Testimony from past mentors/mentees
- Junior faculty members meet to informally discuss and share experiences.
- Teaching Skills
- “How to be a Professor 101”
- Inclusive pedagogy and educational equity.
- Managing the classroom climate.
- Establishing student learning goals and goal assessment.
- Teaching for Information literacy.
- Keeping up with technical advancements.
- Online teaching and remote learning.
- Providing students feedback on their learning and grading practices.
- Team teaching.
- Creating effective small groups.
- Teaching through class discussion.
- Classroom incivility.
- Professional skills
- Writing and research workshops.
- Peer mentoring to get feedback on research.
- Grant writing workshops.
- Peer teaching observations to share, discuss, and get feedback on teaching.
- Time and stress management.
- Work/life balance.
- Promotion and tenure
- Understanding the P&T process.
- Department and college standards.
- Demystifying my profession.
- Articulating teaching, research and service goals.
- My strategies on how to get promoted/tenured.
- Strategic choice of service activities.
- Panel of recently tenured/promoted faculty.
- Research and Scholarship Presentations
- Faculty present their research and creative scholarship to the campus.
- Alumni speak to faculty about their professions.
- Mentoring resources - Resources for faculty to develop their network (i.e. travel to meet external mentors or professional development workshops that address mentoring topics).
- Feedback and outcomes evaluation
- Get regular feedback from mentors/mentees on the effectiveness of their mentoring program.
