Mentoring at Midcareer
Reports from two campuses that recently fine-tuned their mentorship programs.
A teaching-enhancement program at Ohio State University draws on techniques and ideas from mentoring programs for new professors and adjusts them for
midcareer and senior faculty members. The program began in 2002 in response to findings from a “work-life” study of faculty. According to Kathryn Plank, associate director of faculty and teaching assistant development at Ohio State, the survey found that some midcareer faculty reported having less support than their junior colleagues and fewer opportunities to meet people. Some also said they were finding it difficult to define new goals since earning tenure and to establish a satisfying work-life balance. To deal with these issues, the faculty members said they wanted more advising than was then available to them.
Through regular meetings with groups of peers, the yearlong teaching-enhancement program created to address some of these needs permits tenured faculty to focus on their teaching and encourages collegial relationships across disciplines. It also aims to foster a faculty culture that brings the scholarship of teaching and research together.
Faculty members who participated in the first year of the program gained access to new faculty development resources and a $750 stipend for instructional enhancement, for which four of the participants (out of eight total) received departmental or college matching funds. Some of the participants also took advantage of support made available from the university’s educational technology office. Peg McMahon, a facilitator of the program, explains that one of the program’s major strengths is bringing together experienced teaching faculty from the “far reaches” of a large campus with multiple locations.“These faculty are bonded by a strong desire to be better teachers,” she says. “They would otherwise probably never get to know each other. It’s always surprising to the group to find out that most of the challenges are ubiquitous across disciplines.” Details about the Ohio State program are available at http://ftad.osu.edu/ostep/mcsf.html.
In 2001, the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan invited junior and senior faculty members, administrators, department chairs, program directors, and deans to participate in survey and focus groups to obtain data about what kind of mentoring would best support the university’s different schools and programs. Based on the findings from this research, the
center and the provost’s office helped develop the following programs.
• ADVANCE, a program funded by the National Science Foundation, works to bolster the recruitment and retention of women faculty in science and engineering.
Participants gather at luncheons and workshops to discuss how to create effective labs, how to foster gender equality in academia, and other issues.
• The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts developed a best-practices report on faculty mentoring that describes general principles and offers advice for departments and colleges. The report is available at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsa/detail/0,2034,537_article_ 9588,00.html.
• The Players Theatre Program brings together professional actors and students who perform sketches related to relationships between faculty members and administrators, multiculturalism, gender, and faculty mentoring. The performances provide an informal yet focused way to think about mentoring.
• The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching also offers workshops tailored to an individual school or program’s needs and concerns.
—Adara Meyers and Jocelyn Auerbach
Academe Interns
Wheaton College (Mass.)
|