WIP: Mentoring early-career engineering faculty - A faculty development coordinator model

Abstract

The benefits that flow to both early career faculty mentees and their academic institutions from mentoring activities continues to be well documented [1] [2]. Research productivity, teaching skills, and service contributions are common factors by which a new faculty member will be assessed on the path to promotion. Yet navigating one's department and the larger institutional environment in light of these factors while maintaining a healthy work/life balance can be daunting. At the same time, failure to successfully navigate one or more of these areas can lead to professional and personal disappointments with lasting impacts, hence the importance of building a knowledge base on effective faculty mentoring. To contribute to the faculty mentoring model knowledge base, this work-in-progress paper details the objectives, structure, and implementation of a mentoring model for new faculty in a school of engineering and computer science (SECS) following its host institution's (Oakland University, OU) receipt of an NSF ADVANCE Partnerships for Adaptation, Implementation, and Dissemination (PAID) grant between 2011 and 2016. While informal and ad-hoc mentoring of early and mid-career STEM faculty was taking place in some instances, a majority of female and male STEM faculty indicated the need for more mentoring, particularly in the area of research. One important goal for the WISE@OU leadership team was hence to help encourage a culture of mentorship within the STEM departments so that more senior faculty would get involved and the value of mentorship both to the mentee and to the mentor would be recognized. The SECS undertook efforts to develop mentoring activities for its early career faculty. A mentoring model adopted by it involves the use of a Faculty Development Coordinator (FDC) who serves as a point person for untenured (and often tenured) faculty within the School. The FDC follows a mentor network model, serving as a facilitator who can connect faculty with others who may be better able to help with a specific issue. The FDC also provides one-on-one mentoring and organizes several group activities. While this faculty mentoring program is still evolving, this paper describes the setup of the FDC mentoring model in the SECS and presents some preliminary assessment data based on faculty survey responses.