OFD Announces Mutual Mentoring Awards for 2022-23

The Office of Faculty Development has announced that eight teams and one individual faculty member have been awarded Mutual Mentoring Grants for the 2022-23 academic year.

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The Office of Faculty Development’s Mutual Mentoring Grant Program provides funding to individual faculty and groups of faculty for the purpose of developing mentoring networks. The Mutual Mentoring Team Grants and Micro Grants encourage faculty to develop strong professional networks in support of their growth as researchers, teachers, and leaders in their fields.

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.

“OFD's Mutual Mentoring Grant Program continues to fund innovative, cross-disciplinary, and inclusive mentoring projects that span early to senior faculty careers among faculty on all tracks and librarians,” says Michelle Budig, senior vice provost for faculty affairs. “This year's class of mutual mentoring grantees are exceptional in the mentoring networks they plan to enrich both for the grant recipients and for their broader communities of scholars and students. As scholars navigate their way to a new normal under the pandemic, mutual mentoring has never been more vital.”

2022-23 Mutual Mentoring Team Grant Recipients:

Advancing Equity in Undergraduate Education Through High Quality Undergraduate Research Mentoring

School of Public Health and Health Sciences

Team: Kimberley Geissler, associate professor of health promotion and policy; Sarah Goff, associate professor and program head of health policy and management; Aline Gubrium, professor of health promotion and policy and program head for community health education; Gloria DiFulvio, Senior Instructor and Undergraduate Program Director of Health Promotion and Policy; Liz Evans, associate professor of health promotion and policy

The team will meet monthly to share experiences and resources related to mentoring undergraduate researchers with a special emphasis on mentoring students from underrepresented groups.

Books in SBS

College of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Team: Nick Caverly, assistant professor of anthropology; Lynnette Arnold, assistant professor of anthropology; Seyram Avle, assistant professor of communications; Burcu Baykurt, assistant professor of communications; Jen Lundquist, professor of sociology and senior associate dean of research and faculty development; Kelsey Whipple, assistant professor of journalism

This group addresses mentoring challenges around writing and publishing scholarly monographs for College of Social and Behavioral Sciences faculty.

Exploring Best Practices for Anti-Racist Educator Preparation Program Design

College of Education and School of Public Health and Health Sciences

Team: Beverly Bell, senior lecturer of education and assistant dean of educator preparation; Benita Barnes, associate professor of education and associate dean of diversity and inclusion; Keisha Green, associate professor of education and co-founder of the Center of Racial Justice and Youth Engaged Research; Amanda Marcotte, associate professor of education and program coordinator of school psychology; Lisa Sommers, clinical associate professor of communication disorders and clinic director

This mutual mentoring project will provide an opportunity for co-mentoring within a team whose programs reside in different departments and colleges, and who all bring different knowledge, skills, and expertise to the work they need to do.

HFA Faculty Networking Initiative

College of Humanities and Fine Arts (HFA)

Team: Joye Bowman, HFA senior associate dean; Lisa Green, HFA associate dean of graduate research and DEI; Barbara Krauthamer, HFA dean; Jason Moralee, HFA associate dean of research and DEI; TreaAndrea Russworm, HFA associate dean of undergraduate education and DEI; Monika Schmitter, professor and chair of history of art and architecture; Tony Tuck, professor and chair of classics

The HFA Faculty Networking Initiative connects recently hired tenure-track assistant professors with distinguished scholars and artists at institutions beyond the UMass academic community.

Leaning and Learning Across Units to Address Leadership Challenges

College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, College of Humanities and Fine Arts, and School of Public Health and Health Sciences

Team: Kiran Asher, professor and incoming chair of women, gender and sexuality studies; David Solas, professor of Spanish and incoming program director of Spanish and Portuguese unit, department of languages, literatures, and cultures; Erica Scharrer, professor and chair of communication; Lindiwe Sibeko, associate professor and interim chair of nutrition; Jackie Urla, professor of anthropology and dean of the Graduate School

As mid-career to senior faculty occupying a range of administrative positions, the team plans to learn from and lean into each other as they tackle both day-to-day tasks and challenges associated with their roles and wider concerns of balance, thriving and wellbeing (especially in keeping their intellectual lives a priority).

Maximizing Faculty and Student Epidemiologic Research within the United Kingdom (UK) Biobank Prospective Cohort Study

School of Public Health and Health Sciences

Team: Liz Bertone-Johnson, professor of epidemiology and chair of department of health promotion and policy; Cassie Spracklen, assistant professor of epidemiology; Raji Balasubramanian, professor of biostatistics; Susan Sturgeon, professor of epidemiology; Amanda Paluch, assistant professor of kinesiology, Chi Hyun Lee, assistant professor of biostatistics; Nicole VanKim, assistant professor of epidemiology

The team will mentor one another through monthly meetings where they will discuss various topics, engage with external researchers who are highly experienced with using the data resource, and devise projects using the data to forge new collaborations with each other and the broader student and faculty population.

Nurturing Transplants: Female Korean Faculty Community

Elaine Marieb College of Nursing, School of Public Health and Health Sciences, and College of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Team: Jeungok Choi, associate professor of nursing; Hyeyoung Park, assistant professor of nursing; Joohyun Chung, assistant professor of nursing; Yu-Kyong Choe, associate professor of communication disorders; Ah Ram Lee, assistant professor of journalism

This mutual mentoring project aims to address the unique challenges that female Korean faculty face in their academic careers by initiating the process of building a sustainable support network for female Korean faculty.

Participatory Research Group

W.E.B. Du Bois Library

Team: Annette Vadnais, student success and outreach librarian; Sarah Fitzgerald, assessment and planning librarian; Suenita Berube, library data analyst; Steve Acquah, coordinator of the Digital Media Lab; Sarah Hutton, interim dean of libraries and head of student success and engagement

The Participatory Research Group’s goal is to build a community of participatory research design experts across library departments and across the Five College libraries.

2022-23 Mutual Mentoring Micro Grant Recipient:

David Moorman – associate professor, psychological and brain sciences

College of Natural Sciences

The goal of this mentoring grant is to reach out to highly successful colleagues who are performing similar research (behavioral neuroscience) and to gain insight on their strategies to bring complex projects to completion through effective mentoring and team management.