Have a couple of questions for the junior faculty out there (or for the more senior faculty members who can remember their time as the new kid on the block) ...
1. Did you have a faculty mentor or a team of mentors?
2. Was this part of an official mentoring program at your school or did you seek these people out on your own?
3. Were your mentors from within your department, within your school or external to your institution?
4. What did your mentor(s) specifically help you with (ie teaching, research, grant writing, etc)?
5. How effective were your mentors in helping you find your way as a newbie?
6. How approachable and/or helpful are/were your non-mentor colleagues on newbie-related matters?
Ta.
Music Monday: Bear-y good tunes for the science.
40 minutes ago
6 comments:
1-3. I have a team of two mentors from my department who I was allowed to choose, but who have official departmental responsibilities as my mentors. One just got tenure last year, one is a more senior professor. They have been great so far, very accessible in general as well as giving me a 2h mentoring session based on my annual review document and helping with guidance on my next year's plan.
4. Aside from the session above, both have given me a lot of guidance on grad student mentorship (they were on the committee of the student who just finished her MS) and one of them has advised me considerably on grantwriting, we worked together on a collaborative application I led and he helped me a ton with critiquing/writing style-tone etc.
5. They have been very helpful. Particularly the one who just got tenure last year, who has been through the process under this administration and we work/think in very similar ways.
6. Many others have been incredibly helpful to me too. I've mentioned before there's a group of folks (raning from a few asst profs, mostly assoc profs and a few profs) who go out to lunch every Friday practically rain or shine barring serious commitments or being out of town. That group is like a whole mentoring team. They have read my manuscript, critiqued my grant ideas and given me inside information on how the dept and school work.
Basically, the mentoring environment for me and the other junior faculty is set up to be officially pretty helpful, and we can make it even more so by participating in the lunch and seeking out the extremely kind and supportive people around.
I never got jack diddly fucking shit as far as any kind of formal mentoring as a junior faculty, and there is no formal umbrella program at my institution, nor in the vast majority of individual departments. I was left to my own devices.
However, the vast majority of more senior people than me have always been pretty good with providing me mentoring when I have asked for it.
1-3. There is no official 'mentoring' system. There are a few people that have filled that role...one is a very senior big cheese (we happen to have common interests), another is a recently tenured prof. In addition, every faculty member I have asked for aid in learning the ropes has been great. I chalk it up to being a pretty friendly culture. This has been in my department and outside.
4. My teaching committment is near zero right now...but when I have needed advice or previous lectures, there was no issue. Everybody gave me the same advice about teaching...avoid large responsibility... .teach a few lectures so grad students can get to know you exist.
For grant-writing...people who have successfully gotten grants have given me copies, also helped me flush out the grant, and then read over drafts. Overall, pretty good with grants. I have heard of people having formal grant review classes that really have people poring over your application...that sounds nice, but this unofficial thing worked pretty well.
As far as research...I feel pretty confident in what I have to do, so I feel like I don't need any mentoring here. But I will say that everybody wants to collaborate on something. Some of these things are actually really exciting. But...a key piece of advice I received...'don't spread yourself too thin, work on getting your own line of research going..and then branch out with little collaborations'
5) 'mentors' have all been great in learning to help navigate the administrative crap....basically giving me all of their admin material and letting me copy/paste as I please. sounds silly, but it saved me a long time. plus, they are available to answer any questions.
6) Everybody I have gone to with newbie questions (and there are so many!) has been very approachable....almost shockingly so. I feel like the people I am interacting with want me to do well. I don't know if it the specific people I am dealing with, or a product of the local culture.
I don't have time to write out a full answer, but we do have a junior faculty mentoring program at the university level and I was assigned two mentors when I came in. One in my department and one in a related department, but in a different college. Both have tenure and both are very accessible. I have received advice when I've asked and also had one call the Vice-Provost over something when I was having no luck getting answers. It's been helpful, but I haven't really asked for advice on teaching or grant writing from them. I have gone to people in my field who are friends that have been successful with funding. As for the teaching, I guess I'll end up asking some questions when I have a full class in the spring.
That said, I probably ask one or two others in my dpartment about certain matters, only because I have developed a relationship with them. Everyone I have asked has been willing to help.
There is no such thing as junior faculty thus obviating the need for a junior faculty mentoring process.
1. Did you have a faculty mentor or a team of mentors?
>>>>Yes
2. Was this part of an official mentoring program at your school or did you seek these people out on your own?
>>>Nope -- I found my own mentors...and it was outside of my Dept.
3. Were your mentors from within your department, within your school or external to your institution?
>>> Outside of the Dept.
4. What did your mentor(s) specifically help you with (ie teaching, research, grant writing, etc)?
>>>Yes -- but we did have a "grants discussion" within the Dept in which each faculty presented their grant and got feedback. Honestly, it's better in theory than in practice. The most help I received was one on one where somebody actually READ my grant.
5. How effective were your mentors in helping you find your way as a newbie?
>>> Very in many ways...but again, it was all self motivated. Sink or swim, baby.
6. How approachable and/or helpful are/were your non-mentor colleagues on newbie-related matters?
>>> Not very helpful -- it was (and still is) in an era when everybody was struggling for their own funding. Now that I have funding and am on the cusp of tenure, I am making it a point to pass on what I can to my post-docs and other new faculty.
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