Developing an effective mentoring program for early-career STEM faculty: Lessons learned from the first three years of an ADVANCE PAID program

Abstract

Three years ago, the WISE@OU program at Oakland University, funded by an NSF ADVANCE Partnerships for Adaptation, Implementation, and Dissemination (PAID) grant, set out to identify and implement strategies that would increase the recruitment, retention, promotion and job satisfaction of women and underrepresented faculty in STEM departments. To help identify key areas of concern among the STEM faculty, a climate survey and subsequent focus group meetings were conducted. With no formal faculty mentoring programs in place or active in any of the STEM departments, it hence came as no surprise that a majority of female and male STEM faculty indicated the need for more mentoring, particularly in the area of research. The benefits of mentoring in the workplace have long been documented in the literature, yet early and mid-career faculty at Oakland University were generally left to fend for themselves unless they were fortunate enough to identify helpful faculty in their departments on their own. The WISE@OU program has hence set out to develop a multi-faceted, effective and sustainable mentoring program for faculty in STEM. An unusually high percentage of women in the 2012 cohort of new STEM faculty (5 out of 8) presented the WISE@OU program with a unique opportunity to test out different mentoring models and have a lasting impact on this and subsequent faculty cohorts. One-on-one, peer-to-peer and group mentoring activities were organized, first for the 2012 cohort and then expanded to include the 2011, 2013 and now 2014 STEM faculty hires. Some of these activities include one-on-one review of practical grant-related information, peer-review of internal and external proposals, workshops and a luncheon series that brings together the early-career faculty in an informal setting and allows them to interact with critical university leaders, senior STEM faculty from other departments and with each other. Given the still relatively low number of women faculty, invitations to these activities have been extended to all early-career STEM faculty and attendance has been very good. WISE@OU has received enthusiastic, positive feedback from the faculty participants and has been successful at creating a comfortable cross-disciplinary network in which these critical STEM faculty can thrive. This paper describes the cohort mentoring initiatives that WISE@OU has undertaken, as well as results of subsequent satisfaction surveys administered to the faculty involved. Efforts to make the program sustainable after the NSF funding expires will also be discussed.