Faculty Mentor Guidelines
To help you succeed and get the most out of your mentorship experience, we’ve put together these guidelines:
- Schedule professional meetings that take place during regular working hours. You can add informal meetings if they are useful and appropriate, but the program includes meetings during business hours.
- Model professional behavior to bring out the best in the new faculty member, while helping him/her make professional progress toward tenure and/or promotion.
- Ask open, supportive questions and provide constructive feedback.
- Maintain objectivity and professionalism regarding individuals or groups among administrators, faculty, staff, and students.
- Avoid allowing personal issues to cloud your professional opinions.
- Give specific, constructive feedback. Protégés often not only need to know what they should be doing, but also how they should be doing it. For example, saying someone needs to “Publish more” does not cover how someone should go about doing it.
- Avoid breaking confidences.
- Leave time for unstructured conversations.
- Help connect your protégé with the right people. These can be other researchers or colleagues on campus or staff who work in support services.
- Listen and be sensitive to cultural and professional differences.
- Help new faculty understand that the appropriate balance of teaching, scholarship, and service will differ among faculty and departments, and that all faculty should strive to increase activities in all three areas each year of their probationary period.
- Seek answers when they are not readily available.
- Be accessible.