Developing a Faculty Mentoring Program: A Pilot Project

January 1, 2013
B. BerrettN. NisbettM. Lowe

Abstract

Inspired by their attendance at the 2012 Mentoring Institute, three faculty from different health and human service disciplines are working together to create a formalized mentoring program for their university.  Funding is being provided by the Provost and the College to develop a pilot program across seven academic departments in one College during the 2013-2014 academic year. Best practices identified during a literature review and visits to other universities with established mentoring programs will provide the framework for the pilot program. Newly hired tenure track faculty and their assigned mentors will be provided with resources and have regularly scheduled meetings to assist new faculty in adjusting to the university and assist the mentors in providing effective guidance. Using a mixed methods design, data will be collected throughout the year to assess program effectiveness. Both graduate and undergraduate students will be included to assist with literature review, tool development, data collection, and data analysis. This presentation will discuss the inspiration for the program, its structure, methodology, funding, and resources. Baseline data, collected from 2012-2013 new hires not involved in a formal mentoring program, will be discussed as well as preliminary data collected from the newly hired faculty and their mentors.

Paper

Faculty mentoring at universities takes on a wide variety of forms and levels of effectiveness. At California State University, Fresno, a mentoring program for new tenure-track faculty exists on paper, but with no training, structure, or oversight, the success of the program varies greatly. Effective mentoring can provide new faculty members with the necessary support as they navigate the campus culture and the tenure process. In many institutions, faculty members receive conflicting information regarding the promotion and tenure process that leads to performance anxiety and stress (Eddy & Gaston-Gayles, 2008). The authors of this paper have all had different experiences as mentees and mentors and saw a need to create a more formal program.

Attending the 2012 Mentoring Institute inspired the authors to begin exploring formal mentoring programs. Research indicates that participating in a formalized mentoring program provides new faculty members with higher self efficacy (Feldman, et.al., 2010),  encourages personal and professional growth (Mijares, Baxley, & Bond, 2013), and promotes collegiality (Mullen & Kennedy, 2007). Initially, we began asking ourselves a number of poignant questions as we began exploring the possibility of establishing a formal program. Who should be mentors and who should decide on the pairings? Whose responsibility is it to assure a positive mentoring relationship and how is that measured? When does mentoring end? Is it just to get a tenure track faculty to tenure, or should mentoring continue to support tenured faculty into leadership and administrative positions? Should mentoring focus on the faculty members discipline/scholarship, campus involvement, or community integration?  Can one mentor effectively support a mentee in all these areas, or are multiple mentors needed? All of these questions and more were pondered as the authors investigated the essential elements of formal mentoring programs.

With the support of the Dean of the College of Health and Human Services, the authors have chosen to begin by developing a pilot program for the newly hired tenure track faculty for the College, effective fall 2013. We recognize that a collectivist approach to mentoring new faculty members is needed to support their teaching, advising, service, and research (Griffiths, Thompson, & Hryniewicz, 2010). Best practices identified in the literature and visits to other universities with established mentoring programs are providing a framework for the pilot program. The authors will share the results of the pilot with the faculty affairs office. If beneficial, the authors anticipate consideration will be given to implement the program campus-wide.

During the summer of 2013, the authors are contacting the department chairs for those departments with new faculty to identify potential mentors. While the selection of mentors will be an area of investigation for the authors, for the pilot program, the departments will follow current procedures for identifying mentors. No uniform process exists within the College, each department makes the decision based on department resources, and typically, the interests and input of the new faculty. This pilot program is utilizing the four critical components of a mentoring program identified by D'Abate & Eddy (2008) that include appropriate matching, preparation, interaction and outcome assessment of mentors and mentees.

Once selected, the mentors will be invited to join a faculty learning community lead by a faculty member with mentoring expertise. The intent of the faculty learning community is to provide a venue for faculty to share insights, discuss problems, learn new techniques, and support each other to be better mentors. Mentors will be provided with a small professional development stipend as compensation for their participation in the faculty learning community. In addition, a course management system will be utilized to develop an online community for the mentors with support materials and resources. Our objective is to mitigate potential barriers to effective mentoring programs that may include conflicts between gender roles, cultural differences, and power dynamics (Cowin, Cohen, Ciechanowski, & Orozco, 2012).

Beginning in the fall, the newly hired tenure track faculty and their assigned mentors will have regularly scheduled meetings to assist new faculty in adjusting to the university and assist the mentors in providing effective guidance. Topics to be covered during those meetings will be taken from the literature. Both new faculty and mentors will also be provided with resources, including campus and community contacts, to assist new faculty in adapting to the campus. It is anticipated that a benefit of the meetings, in addition to the resources provided, will be an opportunity for new faculty to engage with both new and seasoned faculty from across the College, increasing their sense of community.

Funding for this project is being provided by the Provost and the Dean. The Provost is providing each author with a one-course release to develop, implement, and evaluate this project. The Dean is providing funding for undergraduate and graduate students to assist with the project as well as funding for each author to visit other universities and interview directors of well-known mentoring programs.

Using a mixed methods design, data will be collected throughout the year to assess program effectiveness. Both mentees and mentors will complete pre-post surveys and will also participate in focus groups to gather information about the mentoring program. Baseline data will also be collected via surveys from 2012-2013 new hires who were not involved in a formal mentoring program. Both graduate and undergraduate students will contribute to the project, assisting with literature review, tool development, data collection, and data analysis.

Anticipated outcomes of this project include two handbooks, one for mentors and one for mentees, both developed from the best practice literature as well the results of the pilot program. Recommendations will also be provided to the University for the implementation of a formal mentoring program. Finally a manuscript will be submitted to a refereed journal, and a paper submitted to the 2014 Mentoring Institute focused on the results of the pilot project.

Presentation Outcomes

The presentation will highlight the experiences of three faculty members who have collaborated across disciplines to develop a formal mentoring program for their departments, college, and university. Mentoring has been identified as a strategy for empowering junior faculty to contribute to their own professional growth and to the mission of higher education.  Isolation is a common experience for faculty members, which is one of several factors that allowed the presenters to build consensus among administrators and faculty members to support this pilot study. Results from the baseline quantitative survey and focus groups reported by 2012-2013 faculty members who did not participate in a formal mentoring program will be provided. Materials will be provided to attendees that summarize how mentors were prepared, criteria for appropriately matching mentees and mentors, interactions between participants, as well as our assessment outcomes.

 

 

REFERENCES

Cowin, K. M., Cohen, L. M., Ciechanowski, K. M., & Orozco, R. A. (2012). Portraits of Mentor Junior Faculty Relationships: From Power Dynamics to Collaboration. Journal Of Education, 192(1), 37-47.

D'Abate, C. P., & Eddy, E. R. (2008). Mentoring as a learning tool: enhancing the effectiveness of an undergraduate business mentoring program. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership In Learning, 16(4), 363-378. doi:10.1080/13611260802433692

Eddy, P. L., & Gaston-Gayles, J. L. (2008). New Faculty on the Block: Issues of Stress and Support. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 17(1/2), 89-106. doi: 10.1080/10911350802168878

Feldman, M. D., Arean, P. A., Marshall, S. J., Lovett, M., & O'Sullivan, P. (2010). Does mentoring matter: results from a survey of faculty mentees at a large health sciences university. Medical Education Online, 15(1), 1-8. doi:10.3402/meo.v15i0.5063

Griffiths, V., Thompson, S., & Hryniewicz, L. (2010). Developing a research profile: mentoring and support for teacher educators. Professional Development in Education, 36(1/2), 245-262. doi: 10.1080/19415250903457166

Mijares, L., Baxley, S. M., & Bond, M. (2013). Mentoring: A Concept Analysis. Journal Of Theory Construction & Testing, 17(1), 23-28.