Dr. Nora Domínguez, Director of The Mentoring Institute at the University of New Mexico, and Dr. David Law, Professor at Utah State University Uintah Basin are the editors of the new comprehensive handbook Making Connections: A Handbook for Effective Formal Mentoring Programs in Academia.

This handbook is available electronically in Pressbooks. The associated website contains podcasts about the book's 28 chapters, hosted by the Millennials Mentor Tamara Thorpe. Fifty-one mentoring scholars from the United States and the United Kingdom wrote the book's chapters.

The primary goal of this handbook is to help academic mentoring programs move from an ad hoc culture to one of intentionality and effectiveness. The book's chapters provide a ‘one-stop shop’ for those wishing to develop, implement, evaluate, sustain, and fund mentorship at their university. The audience for this book is practitioners, university leaders, and researchers, with a primary focus on novice program coordinators.

This book has four parts. Part I contains four chapters that position the reader to understand the origins and evolution of the mentoring arena in academia.

Part II includes 11 chapters to help practitioners, researchers, and university leadership design, implement, evaluate, and fund effective mentoring programs.

Part III provides four case studies on undergraduate students as mentees, two on graduate students as mentees, three for mentoring faculty, and two on mentoring university staff.

Part IV, which focuses on future directions of mentoring in academia, has a chapter and case study devoted to networked approaches.

"This handbook is a must-read for anyone who wants to design an effective mentoring initiative in academia," said renowned mentoring expert Kathy Kram. "The contributors include scholars and practitioners who have examined the challenges of creating high-quality mentoring experiences in highly complex settings."

"I have witnessed the profound impact of mentoring on the retention and achievement of our valued students, faculty, and staff," said David Woolstenhulme, Utah Commissioner of Higher Education. "I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking to improve retention rates and enhance professional development within their university community."

The book is a collaborative institutional effort by the UNM's Mentoring Institute and USU Empowering Teaching Open Access Book Series. Authors included several UNM contributors: Nora Dominguez, Director of the Mentoring Institute; Tara Hackel, Program Manager at the SOM Research Education Office; Rebecca Hartley, Assistant Dean for Foundational Medical Sciences and Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology; Amy Hawkins, Administrative Officer of the UNM Staff Council; Nancy Lopez, Professor of Sociology; Orrin Myers, Biostatistician and Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine; Valerie Romero-Leggott, Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the UNM Health Sciences Center; Yadeeh Sawyer, Program Coordinator at the Engineering Student Success Center; Timothy Schroeder, Director of the Undergraduate Research, Arts & Design Network; Andrew Sussman, Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine; and, Assata Zerai, Vice President for Equity and Inclusion and a Professor of Sociology.

Access the open source book at Making Connections: A Handbook for Effective Formal Mentoring Programs in Academia

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