Results of numerous studies suggest that intellectual, social, and resource support from senior colleagues, chairs, deans, and campus administrators may be critical to attracting, developing, and retaining new and underrepresented faculty. In particular, findings point to the importance of the essential mentoring role played by individuals within an early-career faculty member’s department, including other early-career faculty, more senior colleagues, and the department chair.
What issues and opportunities should colleagues be aware of in supporting early-career faculty? The guidelines and suggestions in this section can be used to reflect on how to create an effective and supportive mentoring partnership, to prepare for mentoring sessions, and/or to identify areas for learning that might contribute to further development as a mentoring partner.
Characteristics of a good mentor
A good mentor:
- Is willing to share knowledge and academic career experience.
- Listens actively and non-judgmentally—not only to what is being said but also to how it is said.
- Asks open and supportive questions that stimulate reflection and makes suggestions without being prescriptive.
- Gives thoughtful, candid, and constructive feedback on performance and asks for the same.
- Provides emotional and moral encouragement, remaining accessible through regular meetings, emails, calls, etc.
- Acts as an advocate for the mentoring partner, brokering relationships and aiding in obtaining opportunities.
To-do list for mentors
- Consider your own motivations for being a mentor. How will your experience and expertise contribute to the relationship? What concrete things can you do to help your mentoring partner? What skills are your strengths as a mentor (e.g., coaching, goal setting, guiding, promoting, problem solving, navigating political shoals, etc.)?
- Make contact with your mentoring partner as soon as possible and establish a regular meeting time, perhaps for coffee or lunch.
- Get to know your mentoring partner and their circumstances and concerns. Be willing to share information and perspectives. Also, it may be difficult for an early-career faculty member to approach you with problems or questions, so suggesting topics for discussion or asking questions may be helpful.
- Remember that information shared by your mentoring partner is confidential. A breach of confidentiality can irreparably damage even the best mentoring relationships. To avoid this, make clear decisions about confidentiality early on. For example, “What we say to each other needs to be held in confidence, unless we give each other permission to talk about it with others.”
- Offer your mentoring partner “insider’s advice” about the campus, department, or profession. What do you know now that you wish you had known earlier in your career? What were the roadblocks that you encountered along the way? What have you learned? How do your experiences compare with those of your mentoring partner?
- Provide support and help with any questions or problems that might arise relating to professional and/or personal matters. You don’t need to have the answer for every question. Rather, you can act as a resource or a guide and direct your mentoring partner to the appropriate office or person who can help.
- Focus on your mentoring partner’s development; you should respond to their needs and to what they are looking for in the relationship. This might mean helping your mentoring partner sort out expectations and priorities for the relationship.
- Provide constructive feedback. Help your mentoring partner solve their own problem’s rather than giving them directions. Remember you are not directing or evaluating your mentoring partner; rather, you are assisting, coaching, and supporting.
- Introduce your mentoring partner to colleagues outside of the department and institution whenever possible and appropriate. These colleagues might be in the same field or specialization, use similar research methods, have parallel teaching interests, or be at a similar or different career stage. Connections with different faculty will encourage your mentoring partner to build a network of mentors who can offer specific knowledge, skills, and new perspectives.
- Look for opportunities to meet in person, but also explore other options for connecting (e.g., telephone, email, videoconferencing, etc.).
- Mentoring is one of many other personal and professional commitments that you and your mentoring partner are juggling. Be open to setting a mutually reasonable number of meetings, rescheduling meetings if necessary, or calling a “time-out” during a particularly busy month.
- Recognize when the relationship may be moving toward closure and encourage your mentoring partner to seek new mentors as their needs change.
Suggested activities to do with your mentee
Getting started
- Introduce your mentoring partner to colleagues and helpful people in the department/school/college, so they can benefit from a range and variety of colleagues.
- Show a new faculty member the physical layout and resources of the department and campus, making sure to explain any local rules, customs, and practices.
- Help your mentoring partner locate basic written information on teaching, research, and administrative requirements and responsibilities in your department, college, and/or university (e.g., course management system, forms for annual faculty review, office of grants and contracts).
- Explain the various support systems on campus (e.g., the ombudsperson, psychological services, learning and other student support services).
Research
- Discuss your mentoring partner’s research focus. Is your mentee developing a consistent theme, theory or model, and direction?
- Advise on the kind of publications that are considered “first-tier” in your department and estimate a realistic “benchmark” in terms of the kinds and numbers of articles, monographs, or books expected.
- Suggest appropriate journals for publication—both traditional and online, if appropriate—and offer feedback on the writing of research articles and conference papers.
- Encourage participation in departmental/interdisciplinary research activities, such as informal discussions about writing projects, colloquia for ideas in progress, and visiting scholar presentations.
- Introduce your mentoring partner to departmental and/or interdisciplinary research groups to provide an avenue for co-authored papers and co-authored/collaborative grant-writing or research projects (if viewed positively in your department).
- Help your mentoring partner identify campus and external resources for research, such as sessions on academic coaching and writing, grant proposal writing workshops, summer research grants, and funds for travel to professional meetings.
Teaching
- Provide information to your mentoring partner about teaching, such as a profile of students, sample syllabi, teaching exercises, technology resources, and office hours.
- Discuss teaching norms such as course structures, assignments, and exam questions, as well as departmental standards for fairly assessing and grading students’ work.
- Offer to visit your mentoring partner’s classroom and provide constructive feedback—and invite your mentoring partner to visit your classes.
- Encourage your mentoring partner to connect with the teaching and learning center on campus, in particular to access processes that provide early, formative feedback on teaching (e.g., confidential midterm feedback from students) but also for workshops, teaching fellowships, and grants.
- Discuss key student issues, such as advising, sponsoring independent studies, and working with and supervising graduate students.
- Discuss how to deal with student problems, such as issues of motivation, class management, emotional difficulties, being underprepared for a course,
and what to do about cheating and academic dishonesty. - Discuss how colleagues in the department get, interpret, and use feedback on teaching from students, peers, consultants, etc., to improve their teaching and student learning.
- Encourage discussions about teaching and learning among the early-career and senior colleagues in your department and/or college.
- Recommend resources on teaching strategies for college and university teachers for your mentoring partner.
Service
- Advise your mentoring partner on what kinds and amount of service and/or outreach are expected in the department.
- Advise your mentoring partner on how to select administrative duties and committee work that will support their research and teaching agenda (e.g., graduate student admissions; departmental speaker series).
- Be alert to whether or not your mentoring partner’s service to the department, school, university, or external organizations is perhaps hindering their accumulation of evidence for tenure and share your concerns with your mentoring partner.
Tenure and/or evaluation processes
- Help your mentoring partner set challenging but realistic goals that match the particular mission and resources of your department and align with the central missions of your college or university.
- Encourage your mentoring partner to keep an ongoing log or record of their scholarly activities in teaching, research, service, and outreach.
- Regularly solicit feedback from your mentoring partner about perceptions of and experiences with the evaluation process.
- Encourage your mentoring partner to attend department, college, or campus workshops on preparing for the evaluation process.
Balancing professional and personal life
- Help your mentoring partner set up a plan of short- and long-term goals; encourage your partner to measure progress and success on the goals identified.
- Share your experiences of setting priorities, managing time, handling stress, and balancing workload effectively.
- Connect your mentoring partner to special resources or networks on campus that might be of relevance (e.g., networks for women or faculty of color).
- Link your mentoring partner to information and services for dual-career couples and for flexible employee benefits such as parental leaves, flexible time limits for tenure, part-time status for childrearing, and childcare.
- Provide information and facilitate access to non-academic resources in the area, such as housing, schools, and child care options, as well as cultural, entertainment, and sporting events both on and off campus.