New faculty, especially those who have never taught before

1
Mentoring of New Faculty Members What Do We Know?

• Studied extensively by Robert Boice
• The New Faculty Member (1992)
• Advice for New Faculty Members (2000)

• New faculty, especially those who have never
  taught before, often feel lonely, isolated, and
  have time management issues.
• Without guidance and mentoring, most faculty take
  4-5 years to bring their research productivity
  and teaching effectiveness to a level that meets
  or exceeds institutional standards.

2
Mentoring of New Faculty Members What Do We
Know? (contd)

• The strategy and techniques that quick starters
  use can be taught to others.
• Boice has identified a group of quick starters
  that ramp up their teaching/research much more
  rapidly within 1-2 years.
• Informal mentoring within departments is not
  enough.  Chairs may think that mentoring of new
  faculty is effectively taking place it probably
  isnt.
• A system involving department mentors and
  external mentors from outside departments
  appears to work well. (UT 2001)

3
Mentoring of New Faculty Members What Do We
Know? (contd)

• Mentors should be assigned early very soon
  after a hire and communicate with the new
  faculty member even before he or she arrives at
  the  University.
• Mentors need to be pushed a bit and monitored, at
  least initially, to assure they meet regularly
  with their mentees.
• There should probably be regular group meetings
  of assigned mentors to keep people interested and
  updated.

4
Mentoring of New Faculty at UT

• November 2006 Focus group meetings organized by
  Provosts Office
• Met with nine newly-tenured faculty hired in 2000
  or 2001

• We want all our new faculty to succeed.
• UTs AY 2001/2 centralized mentoring program
• Amount/quality of mentoring within departments
  highly variable
• Annual reviews, dossier prep (binders!) helpful

5
Mentoring of New Faculty at UT, contd

• Often very high service loads!
• Tenure/promotion process relatively transparent,
  but criteria appear mysterious
• Many tenure/promotion urban legends,
  considerable cynicism
• Votes received, but not the reasons/explanations
  for the vote
• New faculty need someone to talk to off the
  record

6
Mentoring of New Faculty at UT, contd
Promotion to Full Professor

• Good fraction of focus group members were not
  sure they wanted to try for this
• Expectations for full professor promotion not
  clear
• Relatively minor rewards?
• Perhaps tenure exhaustion speaking?
• Nobody seems to ask them about career goals