Mentoring New Faculty: How Much, How Often, And How?

The Department of Technology Systems (TSYS) at East Carolina University has implemented a new faculty mentoring process to enable junior faculty members to learn from senior faculty members as they prepare for a career in academia. Five tenured professors and associate professors in the TSYS department have recently established a new process to mentor faculty members within the department who have begun not yet completed their initial tenure process at a major university. This process includes a series of workshops regarding academic performance expectations during the early stages of an academic career. Our commitment to new faculty takes on several related, yet distinct features. Examples of these initiatives include: 1) reduced workloads for new faculty for the first two years to enable them to generate individual and collaborative research activities, funded grants, and publications, 2) periodic university-wide training to learn policies and procedures that affect day-to-day activities on a college campus, 3) periodic workshops hosted by senior faculty mentors, and 4) one-on-one discussions between senior faculty members and junior faculty members to encourage candid dialogue between professional colleagues. Another feature of the mentorship philosophy is a proposal to the dean of the college to offer newly hired faculty a contractual start date of July 1 st each year instead of starting their contract one week prior to the start of fall classes, normally in late August. This additional period of time will be used to train new faculty in essential policies and procedures, to complete a variety of administrative tasks on campus, to get a head start on preparing for classes in the fall, and cleaning up those supplemental tasks that accompany every move to a new location. The goal of this early commitment to new faculty is to reduce the stress associated with preparing for a new course, in a new environment, with a new set of operating procedures. This will also enable the mentorship team to begin the tenure preparation process under a more relaxed and effective environment. This paper will provide specific details of this new mentorship program and its effectiveness thus far.