Please describe the goal and purpose of your mentoring program.

The Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University offers bachelor's and master’s degree programs which prepare graduates to thrive as educators in schools and other learning environments. We believe the foundation of developing thriving students requires academic units to function with a student-centric approach, holistically supporting student learning in personalized ways. Functioning with an asset-based mindset, our SOS mentoring model fosters intentional relationships between faculty, staff, and students, supporting students’ mental well-being, financial understanding, and involvement within the college and the community both in and outside of the classroom. Through our mentoring program, our goal is to empower future educators with skills and knowledge needed to successfully complete their degree resulting in increased retention and persistence rates. (Erica Mitchell, MEd, Executive Director, Academic Services)

What academic/personal problems were these students facing that led you to create this program?

In 2012, the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at ASU embarked on a large-scale reform, known as iTeachAZ. Significant to the changes were the broad idea that literacy skills be taught across the curriculum, including the areas of science, social sciences, and math; and the revamping of math curriculum to focus on problem-solving strategies.

iTeachAZ transformed teacher preparation by providing increased hands-on experiences and doubling the amount of time spent in clinical experiences and requiring a full year supervised student teaching residency in a partner school district, which follows the Professional Development School model. iTeachAZ increased rigor by (a) increasing the number of math courses required for preservice teachers from two to five; (b) adding science content classes; (c) utilizing the research-based observation instrument developed by the System for Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP); and (d) applying letter grades to student teaching rather than a pass/ fail option. Additionally, preservice teachers were evaluated regularly on a professionalism rubric that helped transition them from student identity to professional teacher identity and dispositions. Finally, the courses that accompanying the full-year student teaching were moved from ASU campuses to 25 partner school districts, resulting in a huge shift in community embeddedness. As a result of these reform efforts, two issues surfaced. First, more students were at risk of failing both professionally and academically due to the increase in rigor and second, there was a time lag in corrective feedback to students when concerns arose during their program. (Martha A. Cocchiarella, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor)

How does this program address the above problems, and what are some of the outcomes students take away from participating in it?

The SOS collaborative team envisions a system that reflects a person-centered planning with goal setting, coaching and mentoring, progress tracking through corrective feedback, and time sensitivity. In person-centered planning, a team of professionals uses available resources to meet the unique needs of each individual. In our case, we want the student to be at the center of the planning and to participate in generating and solving their own problems, with a specific timeline for implementation, evaluation, debriefing effectiveness, and the identification of possible resources.

This system includes identifying and supporting students with mental health issues, financial concerns, personal and family matters, disabilities, first generation students, and those that struggle from moving from a student mindset to an educator mindset. Students leave with tools and strategies to overcome challenges that might otherwise have seemed hopeless. (Martha A. Cocchiarella, PhD, Clinical Associate Professor)

Please describe the process students go through during the course of this program.

We consider all students, beginning in their freshman year, to be part of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College where services, such as the SOS system are employed. Before entering the iTeachAZ program in their junior year, undergraduate teacher candidates take courses designed to coincide with their needs as teachers and strengthen their preparation in the disciplinary understandings that they will bring to their teaching. This preparation provides important background for their pedagogy courses and sets the stage for their successful classroom practices iTeachAZ.

Graduate students begin clinically embedded field experiences as early as their second semester. Students are provided qualified, trained mentors and university provided supervisors for all field experiences prior to and including student teaching. Our students are considered members of our teacher preparation community beginning the first day they decide to enroll in MLFTC and con- tinue to be members of our professional teacher community long after they are graduate. (Carlyn Ludlow, PhD, Clinical Assistant Professor)

What problems have you yourself encountered over the course of developing your program?

Several issues initially presented challenges in implementation. The first challenge was trying to conduct meetings with students and designated administration/advocates across four campuses in the Phoenix area. The distance between campus and K-12 school internship sites can be up to 50 miles and/or 1.5 hours in traffic. To address this challenge, we held meetings on designated days in a central location (Tempe Campus Advising Office) so that participants would have a consistent schedule and location. Previously, we attempted to hold meetings on all four campuses, which became too time consuming for faculty and staff. Further, we used digital or phone meetings when an in-person meeting was not feasible. A second challenge was distributing meeting outcomes in a timely manner to key stakeholders. To address this issue, we created and refined a near real time data dashboard system. The system allows students and relevant faculty/staff to access goals/progress through a secure log in. (Pam J. Harris, PhD, Clinical Assistant Professor)

What are your future plans for this program? Is there anything else you believe could be further explored or expanded upon?

We hope to create a continuous improvement loop through surveying students and faculty on the features of the program they currently find valuable and what features we could add or improve on in the future. Our goal is to continue to assist students in a helpful, goal-oriented manner while maintaining both confidentiality for students and transparency in available resources. (Pam J. Harris, PhD, Clinical Assistant Professor)

Do you have any advice for others who may want to begin a sim- ilar program at their own university?

Avoid jumping to conclusions about the issues you believe students are experiencing and developing a mentoring program based off an assumption. Talk to students, hold focus groups, visit classes, talk to faculty - often the problem you think needs solved is not the underlying problem that actually needs addressed. Sometimes student behavior is a result of outside factors that we may not be aware of and the behavior is symptomatic of a larger cause. Be cautious that you are not treating symptoms instead of the problem. (Erica Mitchell, MEd, Executive Director, Academic Services)

Huffington Post writes about how mentoring benefits the lives of all in their article commemorating international mentoring day in January. 

Read the article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eli-wolff/international-mentoring-d_b_14206704.html?

Imagine if Bruce Lee was your mentor. These are his top 10 rules for success!

It’s evident that a coaching and mentoring strategy requires the sustained support and energy of an organization’s leaders. In our interviews on this topic with both HR professionals and leadership teams, a number of themes recur frequently enough to warrant inclusion in practical guidelines. In no particular order of importance, these are:

The importance of an effective faculty mentoring program in academic institutions has never been questioned. This is because an effective mentoring program helps address the challenges associated with attracting and retaining high-quality faculty, facilitating faculty development, and increasing students’ academic quality through high-quality instruction. This recognition has resulted in different models that have been tried out by institutions with varying levels of success. Our institution, a mid-size university in the mid-west, is no exception. However, in 2008 we revised the existing mentoring program and with faculty input developed a new faculty-driven peer mentoring and consulting program. Several unique elements of this mentoring model have resulted in great success. Our paper will share the positive outcomes of this unique faculty-driven mentoring model and the components of the program responsible for its success. It will also present ways that faculty members have used the results of the mentoring outcomes to enhance their teaching and development.

Here's our interview with 2014 Mentoring Conference Speaker Dr. Bob Garvey. (This interview originally appeared in the October 2014 issue of Mentoring & Coaching Monthly)

Bob Garvey is Professor of Business Education at York St. John Business School.  He is one of Europe’s leading academic practitioners of mentoring and coaching, and an experienced mentor/coach. He works with a range of people from all business sectors including the voluntary sector, the arts, the health sector, as well as, small businesses and large corporations. Bob subscribes to the ‘repertoire’ approach of coaching and mentoring.  Bob is a lively and engaging international conference speaker. Recent examples are EMCC Research Conference in Dublin, APEGA in Canada, the ICF in Lithuania and Latvia, and the African Management Forum, in Sudan. He has published extensively.  His bestselling practitioner book, The Mentoring Pocket Book is now in its 3rd edition.  His most recent work is in the Major Work Series for Sage titled “The Fundamentals of Coaching and Mentoring.” This is a reference collection of 130 papers in 6 volumes with a substantial editor’s introduction. Currently he is working on a new text for Sage with professors David Gray and David Lane on coaching and mentoring in social contexts. 

Coaching and Mentoring are fundamentally different processes. Do you know what sets them apart?

The most difficult part about mentoring for many is simply getting started. Luckily, there are many websites, manuals, and articles online that can be of great help. Our own website has a great list of resources (Go to the "Mentoring Resources" tab and click on "Online Mentoring"), all categorized for your convenience. We went ahead and listed a few favorites from the list below:

When searching for a mentor, it's important to find someone who you are compatible with. By taking an online personality test, you can learn more about yourself and more easily find someone who you will work well with. These tests can be completed easily and quickly, and can provide instant assessments of your termperment, disposition, likes, and dislikes. We have listed a couple of good ones below:

This interview originally appeared in our August issue of Mentoring & Coaching Monthly.

Dr. Ann Rolfe has thirty years experience in learning and development and a background in career counseling, and is Australia’s most published author on mentoring. For two decades, she has specialized in mentoring, setting up programs and training people in fields as diverse as health, construction, energy, communications, education, law and government. Internationally respected as a trainer, consultant and presenter, her training programs and resources are used in many countries to develop and support mentoring. Ann Rolfe’s contributions to mentoring have been recognized with the 2011 LearnX Asia Pacific Platinum Award for Best Coaching/Mentoring Training Program and in 2013