Research
An important role and mission of the Mentoring Institute is research into best practices in mentoring that are specific to our setting. There are probably general best mentoring practices for any setting and any mentor-mentee partnership, but we feel there are also many specific needs for mentors to be most effective in their specific settings.

UNM, as the flagship higher education institution in New Mexico, is a culturally, academically professionally and otherwise diverse university, with very high research activity (Carnegie classification), a Hispanic Serving Institution, and a cultural and academic center for Albuquerque and the state of New Mexico. The Institute's research will take many forms: needs assessment surveys, extensive literature reviews, ethnographic studies with observation, interviews and focus groups, and experimental/quasi-experimental studies. There are also plans to hold or bring a national mentoring conference to Albuquerque, to learn through interaction with experts and learn from others' research efforts. The goal of all of this is to find out what are the best mentoring practices to teach and to practice?

Mentoring Inventory

In the spring semester of 2008, the Institute conducted a Web-based survey to inventory as well as possible the mentoring programs across campus - in schools and colleges, in academic departments, in administrative offices, in student organizations, and in any other UNM entity that might have a mentoring program. The goals for the survey were:

• to be more familiar with the existing mentoring programs the Mentoring Institute exists to serve.

• to better facilitate connections among various mentoring programs as part of "fostering a mentoring culture at UNM."

Please see the Inventory Report on this page. The Mentoring Institute once again thanks all who took the time to inform us of your mentoring program through this survey.