In 2020 the Office of the Provost charged a Faculty Mentoring Taskforce with identifying ways to increase faculty capacity and effectiveness in the areas of mentoring underrepresented minority faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students, and improving the overall mentoring experience for all students and faculty.
The Faculty Mentoring Taskforce was created based on recommendations made in a 2018 report about the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty and in response to the growing understanding that high-quality mentoring is one of the keys to faculty and student retention and success.
The 2020-2021 Faculty Mentoring Taskforce made several recommendations, including creating learning opportunities and resources for faculty to develop, improve, and evolve their mentoring practices. At the same time, another taskforce that was charged in 2020 to examine equity and fairness in faculty review and promotion processes identified improvements in mentoring as a critical area of growth for our campus.
The co-chairs of the Faculty Mentoring Taskforce continued to work with the Provost’s Office in 2021-2022 to research mentoring programs and curriculum, and to create a resource library. Faculty volunteers across campus were recruited to develop a faculty mentoring certificate program, which is being launched this fall. This effort follows the same model as STRIDE where the emphasis is on peer-to-peer education and instructors are compensated for their time.