The Office of Faculty Development (OFD) has awarded nine grants to faculty leading mutual mentoring projects in 2023-24. The projects will support faculty teaching, expand networks, further research excellence, and build community.
OFD’s Mutual Mentoring Grant Program provides funding to faculty and librarians for the purpose of developing and deepening their mentoring supports. These grants encourage faculty and librarians to develop strong professional networks and grow as researchers, teachers, and leaders in their fields. This year’s cohort involves faculty in a variety of career stages who come from six different colleges across campus. They are tackling a wide range of mentoring challenges: adapting teaching practices and curriculum to address the advent of new AI technologies, connecting with colleagues across the U.S. and the globe to further research excellence, and building community and support for female faculty with ADHD.
Associate Provost for Faculty Development, Angela de Oliveira, says, “This is such an exciting group of projects. I look forward to seeing the supportive and transformative impact of the grants on the individuals and teams involved.”
OFD Team grants provide up to $6,000 for one year to support full-time faculty teams. Micro grants provide up to $1,500 for one year to individual faculty. The Office of Faculty Development works in collaboration with UMass ADVANCE which also funds a number of team mutual mentoring grants each year.
To learn more about the Mutual Mentoring Program, please reach out to Director of Faculty Development, Leyla Keough-Hameed at @email.
2023-24 Mutual Mentoring Team Grant Recipients:
B-TEAM (Building Technology Educators Advancing Mentorship)
College of Humanities and Fine Arts - Architecture
Team: Caryn Brause, Jordan Kanter, Ray Mann, and Robert Williams.
This project will emphasize collaboration with colleagues at other institutions and in the profession in order to rebuild the Architecture curriculum at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
Improving Instruction for EDUC Undergraduates
College of Education
Team: Benita Barnes (Associate Dean for Equity & Diversity; Higher Education), Jeanne Brunner (Teacher Education & Curriculum Studies), Camille Cammack (Teacher Education & Curriculum Studies), Kate Hudson (Higher Education), Ben Rodriguez (Undergraduate Academic Advisor), Cristine Smith (Associate Dean for Research & Faculty Development, International Education), Nina Tissi-Gassoway (Social Justice Education), Ruth-Ellen Verock (Teacher Education & Curriculum Studies), and Fred Zinn (Associate Director of Digital Learning).
This mutual mentoring project will provide a community of practice for faculty members in the College of Education to discuss and improve their undergraduate teaching skills in order to meet an increased need.
Inclusive Learning in Intro Biology I
College of Natural Sciences - Biology
Team: Laura Francis, Jeff Laney, Rosa Moscarella, Randall Phillis, Caleb Rounds, and Caralyn Zehnder.
The goal of this mutual mentoring team is to revise an introductory biology course in order to make it more inclusive and supportive of all students.
Teaching in the Time of Chat GPT
College of Humanities and Fine Arts and College of Natural Sciences
Team: Anne Bello (Writing Program), Elkie Burnside (Writing Program), Andrew Farrar (Psychological & Brain Sciences), Amanda Hamel (Psychological & Brain Sciences), Shana Bulhan Haydock (Writing Program), Deb McCutchen (Writing Program), Anna Rita Napoleone (Writing Center), Tara Pauliny (Writing Program), and Janine Solberg (Professional Writing & Technical Communication Program).
This diverse group of faculty will meet regularly to establish and share best practices for teaching writing in a context of rapidly evolving AI technology.
2023-24 Mutual Mentoring Micro Grant Recipients:
Luke Bloomfield – Senior Lecturer of Resource Economics and Junior Year Writing Instructor
College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
The goal of this mentoring grant is to deepen understandings of the potential impact of AI language modeling technology on education.
Stacy Giufre – Director and Senior Lecturer of Italian Studies
Meghan Armstrong-Abrami – Graduate Program Director and Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics
College of Humanities and Fine Arts
This project aims to create a mutual support network for female faculty members with ADHD in order to identify shared challenges and suggest potential institutional supports.
Pari Riahi – Associate Professor of Architecture
College of Humanities and Fine Arts
This grant will be used to workshop the manuscript of a forthcoming book examining social housing projects and their open and public grounds in the suburbs of Paris.
Katie Sveinson – Assistant Professor of Sport Management
Isenberg School of Management
This project addresses the mentoring challenges around developing influential and impactful research, working in interdisciplinary spaces, and
building international networks.
Lucy Xiaolu Wang – Assistant Professor of Resource Economics
College of Social & Behavioral Sciences
This grant will fund international travel to work in person with research collaborators and expand professional mentoring networks.