Celebrating 20 Years of Faculty Mutual Mentoring at UMass with invited speaker Dr. Beronda Montgomery
On Tuesday, April 7, from 4:00–6:00 p.m. at the Marriott Center (11th floor of the Campus Center), the Office of Faculty Development will host a celebration of 20 years of the faculty Mutual Mentoring program at UMass Amherst.
At the celebration, we’ll showcase OFD Mutual Mentoring Grant projects in an exhibit of projects recently awarded and recently completed. The creator of this signature UMass program, Mary Deane Sorcinelli, Professor Emeritus and the founding Director and Associate Provost of the Center for Teaching and Learning, will be honored. And, there will be a talk by Dr. Beronda Montgomery, Professor of Biology at Grinnell College and national mentor training specialist and consultant.
Dr. Montgomery's talk, "From Gatekeeping to Groundskeeping: Cultivating Individual & Communal Thriving," will cover mentoring and professional development of faculty. Copies of her new book When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy (2026) and her 2021 book Lessons from Plants, an exploration of how plant behavior and adaptation offer valuable insights for human thriving, will be available for purchase.
The talk will be followed by a reception, catered by UMass hospitality students at Marriott Meals. We are pleased to announce that the Provost will be in attendance.
More about the UMass Amherst Mutual Mentoring program
The UMass Amherst Mutual Mentoring Program was launched in 2006 to support the mentorship of early career faculty by Associate Provost for Faculty Development and founding director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, Professor Emeritus Mary Deane Sorcinelli. This program remains nationally celebrated as unique in its focus on faculty mutual mentoring, faculty-initiated mentor choice, and faculty-designed projects. Initially funded by a Mellon Foundation Grant, in 2017, the program was granted institutional funding by the Provost’s Office, which has supported it ever since. Since the inception of the Office of Faculty Development in 2019, the program has been managed by OFD. Parallel to OFD’s Mutual Mentoring Program, the UMass Amherst ADVANCE Program has bolstered faculty mentoring on our campus with grant opportunities offered over several years in the early 2020s and continued workshops, resources, and awards on mentoring.
In recognition of the importance of mentoring to all faculty at all stages of their careers, the Mutual Mentoring Program has expanded since 2006 to include all tenure-track and non-tenure faculty and librarians. Seven hundred and thirty-five individual faculty and librarians have participated in 192 mutual mentoring projects (67 micro projects of 1-3 people and 125 team projects of 4 or more people). Faculty and librarians have conducted projects to propel their individual careers and build lasting communities here at UMass. These projects have helped them strengthen their teaching and research excellence and achieve tenure and promotion; build interdisciplinary research, writing and teaching projects; promote new practices and resources for wellbeing; and connect to other faculty around common identities while celebrating diversity.
These faculty-driven projects of mutual support, whether intentionally or not, have had wider and longer-term impacts too. They affect students, other faculty, librarians, or staff, departments, colleges, and schools, and the institution as a whole. And some have served to create positive institutional change on our campus. It’s not an exaggeration to say that every corner of campus has benefited from this investment. And so, at this event, we will celebrate the program’s inception, honor UMass Amherst’s continued commitment to it, engage with Dr. Montgomery on best practices, and recognize the efforts of faculty themselves to mentor each other and drive change.
Read more about the UMass Amherst Faculty Mutual Mentoring program on our website.