Tips for Mentees : Office of Faculty Development : UMass Amherst

Establishing a mutual mentoring network requires early-career faculty to be highly proactive and intentional, two key attributes of successful professional development (Haring 2006). While some mentoring relationships can and do happen “organically,” it is not advisable for early-career faculty to wait for a mentor to choose them or be assigned to them and then hope that the relationship will prove valuable over time. Today, the pressures to publish often, teach well, and juggle the demands of life/work are simply too great to go it alone or remain passive. A mutual mentoring network functions as a safety net of concerned and interested individuals committed to helping an early-career faculty member achieve success over both the short and long term.

This section describes some ways that early-career faculty can determine what their mentoring needs are, find mentoring partners who fit those needs on a wide variety of levels, and make the most of their mentoring partners’ knowledge, experience, and skills.

Characteristics of a Successful Mentee

To-Do List for Mentees

Your department may have a formal mentoring program in place. If so, take advantage of this important resource but keep in mind that the mentor chosen for you (or by you) as part of this program should not be your only source of professional support.
Clarify your needs before you begin to identify or approach potential mentoring partners. Identify the specifics whenever possible. For example, asking someone for “help with time management” is different from asking for “help understanding which types of departmental service commitments will be most manageable while you’re preparing for pre-tenure review.” Knowing what you need helps others determine if they have relevant or useful knowledge to share with you.
For newcomers to an institution (or academia at large), it is often difficult to know what questions to ask a mentoring partner and/or what information is necessary to succeed. Near peers—colleagues who are close to your career level—can be particularly invaluable in such situations because their experiences as newcomers are still reasonably fresh. Helpful global questions to ask include: What do you wish you had known when you first arrived? What were the most unexpected surprises or obstacles that you encountered along the way? What is the most valuable thing you’ve done in support of your teaching, research, and/or service?
Ask some key colleagues who they think you should approach about your specific subjects of interest. Keep in mind that there are many different ways that you can “click” with a mentoring partner. Whose research methods are closest to your own? Who teaches classes similar in size to yours? Who uses a particular classroom technology that you’re interested in adopting? Who seems like the best overall personality match?
Extend your mentoring network beyond departmental colleagues. Identify colleagues in related departments and external scholars who have significant overlap with your academic specialization. These mentors often can serve as more knowledgeable reviewers of your research and grant proposals. They can introduce you to a broader network of scholars and can give you information about other successful academic models and resources.
Look for mentoring partners outside the faculty ranks. For example, a talented librarian specializing in your discipline may be helpful in suggesting hard-to-find resources for a research project.
After engaging with your new mentoring partners, clarify expectations as early as possible—yours and theirs. Failed mentoring relationships are often the result of unmet and/or unrealistic expectations. Try to decide (or get a clear sense of) how often and over what time frame the two of you would like to or are able to meet, whether your interaction will be mostly in person or online, if your mentoring partnership will cover more general topics or more specific ones, if there will be a product or outcome to signal the end of the mentoring relationship, etc.
Thank and acknowledge your mentoring partner(s) whenever possible and appropriate.
Remember that information shared by your mentoring partners is confidential.

Getting started

How is the department, school/college, or university organized? How are decisions made? Are there interpersonal or departmental dynamics that would be helpful to know about?
What resources are available (e.g., travel funds, computer equipment, supplies)? Is there support staff? What should be expected from support staff?
How does the department fit into the college (or university) in terms of mission, personnel standards, and culture? Do I need to take two sets of standards into account when planning my professional development?
How much time do I need to spend in my office and/or lab being visible in the department? Is it considered acceptable/appropriate to work from home?
Are there department or university events that I should be sure to attend?

Research

Is there help available for writing grant proposals, preparing budgets, etc.? How much time should I spend seeking funds?
What kind of publication record is considered excellent in my department and college? How many refereed articles do I need? In what journals? How are online journals viewed? Do I need a book?
How are journal articles or chapters in edited collections viewed? May material published in one place (conference, workshop) be submitted to another journal? How much work is necessary to make it a “new publication?"
How is collaborative work viewed within the department/college? Do co-authored articles count in my discipline? Is being first co-author considered important? Should I put my graduate students’ names on my papers? How is the alphabetical listing of authors viewed?
Do conference and workshop papers/presentations count as research in my discipline?
Should I give talks within my department? How are colloquia organized in my department? How do I publicize my work within the department?
What conferences should I go to? Is it better to go to national conferences or smaller ones? How much travel is allowed/expected? What support is available for travel expenses? How else can I gain the type of exposure I need for good tenure letters?
Would it be advisable to further develop my dissertation or branch out into a new area of research?
What is the process of selecting graduate and/or undergraduate students for my lab?

Teaching

What is the normal teaching profile for early-career faculty in my department/college?
How many independent studies should I agree to sponsor? How do I choose them?
How do I find out what the content of a course should be? Does the department share sample syllabi, assignments, and/or exams?
If I teach undergraduate courses, are resources available for grading, section leadership, and so on? Does the department/college take the nature of the course into consideration when analyzing student evaluations of teaching?
Does the department use student evaluations? Does the department use any other methods beyond student ratings to assess teaching effectiveness?
How is advising handled in the department? How many undergraduate advisees should I have? How much time should I spend in advising them? What campus resources are available if I have questions about departmental and institutional degree requirements?
How many graduate student advisees should I have? How much time and effort should I invest in working with graduate students? How aggressive should I be in recruiting them? Do I need to find resources for them? What should I expect from them? How do I promote my graduate students to the rest of the community?
What is considered an appropriate response to a student who is struggling with course work or is clearly troubled in some way? What resources are available for students? What can/should I suggest?
What kinds of files should I keep on my students?
What am I expected to teach? Should I ask to teach service courses? Should I teach the same course, stay within a single area, or teach around? Should I develop a new course? An undergraduate course? A specialized course in my research area?
Are there department guidelines for grading? What is the usual frequency of midterms, exams, or graded assignments?
What documentation on teaching and advising should I retain for my personnel file?
How do I establish an excellent teaching record? What resources are available at the department/college/university level to help me?

Service

What kind of service to the department, college, and university is expected of me?
What kind of outreach is expected of me?
When should I begin service and outreach? How much should I take on?
Are there committees I should seek out as a new faculty member? Any I should turn down if I am asked to serve?
How much service to the profession or communities outside of the university is recommended or expected?
How do I develop and document an excellent record of service and outreach?

Tenure and/or evaluation processes

What is the approximate balance between research, teaching, and service that I should aim for?
How important is the annual faculty report in merit, reappointment, tenure, and promotion decisions in my department? What sort of documentation of my achievements will help me succeed in these decisions?
What kind of record-keeping strategies can I adopt to make compiling my annual faculty report and/or tenure package both accurate and manageable?
Will I be explicitly told if there are specific concerns about my performance, or will I have to “read between the lines” in my annual evaluation?

Balancing personal life and professional life

What are the resources for meeting and socializing with other early-career faculty?
Where can I get help with dual-career issues, childcare, and other personal concerns?
What support is available to me through the campus and surrounding communities?
Where can I find advice on balancing a personal life (e.g., time for significant others, children, leisure, civic responsibilities) with a professional life (e.g., teaching, research, service).

Tips for Mentees