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Faculty Mentoring Committees

Currently in place for Assistant Professors (Tenure track & Clinical Faculty)
August, 2024

Purpose: Mentoring Committees are designed to provide frequent, supportive, formative feedback to pre-tenured and clinical faculty eligible for promotion with the explicit goal of supporting their progress toward achieving tenure and/or promotion. Mentoring and evaluation as viewed as two separate but parallel processes, which are both intended to promote faculty excellence in teaching, research, and service.

  1. Committees are comprised of two to three tenured or senior (promoted) faculty members, at least one of whom should be in the home department. Committee members will be identified by the mentee in consultation with your colleagues, department chair, and the Associate Dean for Research & Faculty Development (ADR & FD). We strongly encourage having one member of the committee from outside your department.
  2. Committee members are selected based upon their ability to support the faculty member in research, teaching, and service and provide guidance on all matters related to the professional life of SOE faculty. All members of faculty mentoring committees should be active or exemplary in their own areas of research. At least one member of the committee should be recognized as strong in teaching so that they may provide guidance to mentees in the preparation for and teaching of classes at W&M.
  3. One mentor should identify as the committee chair. This individual will be responsible for convening meetings of the committee and the mentee to establish research, teaching, and service goals, to discuss the mentee’s progress at least one time each semester, and to monitor the effectiveness of mentoring and the quality of the mentor/mentee relationships. The goal is to work with the mentee to develop a plan for professional development.
  4. If a committee member is not a good fit for the mentee, or is unable to continue serving on the committee, mentees should reach out to the committee chair and/or the ADR & FD to identify a replacement mentor.

Responsibilities of the Committee

  1. The Mentoring Committee will meet with the mentee at least once per semester during the academic year. At the first meeting, the mentors and mentee will develop specific goals for research, teaching, and service, in accordance with the expectations of the department and the school. The plan will be reviewed at the final meeting of the committee each year and revised based upon the mentee’s progress.
  2. The mentoring process must include mechanisms for providing feedback and support on the mentee’s teaching, including arranging for a peer review of a class. This review may be done by a member of the mentoring committee or by another faculty member as arranged by the committee in consultation with the mentee.

Responsibilities of the Mentors

  1. Mentors may meet individually with their mentees as mutually determined. In addition, they will meet with the mentoring committee at least once each semester.
  2. Mentors will provide guidance, as needed, in mentees’ preparation to teach classes, including consulting on syllabus preparation, textbook /literature selection, and arranging for peer review of courses.
  3. Mentors will provide guidance and frequent feedback to mentees to foster the mentees’ programs of research and to support them in achieving tenure and promotion.

Responsibilities of the Mentoring Committee Chair

  1. The mentoring committee chair is responsible for ensuring that meetings with the mentee take place at least once per semester.
Responsibilities of the Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development

(ADR & FD)

The ADR & FD will assist faculty in establishing mentoring committees designed to advance their professional success in the School of Education at William & Mary.

Assessment of Mentoring Program Success

The ADR & FD will assess the success of the mentoring program on a regular basis. This assessment will consist of the following:

  1. A survey completed by mentees that measures mentee satisfaction with the mentoring process relative to the objectives of the mentoring program
  2. A survey completed by mentoring committee members that measures mentor satisfaction with the mentoring process.
  3. The surveys will be collected and aggregated by the ADR & FD and shared in aggregate with the dean and the faculty affairs committee. The results of these surveys will be kept confidential and will be used by the ADR & FD to provide evidence of mentoring program effectiveness. If the survey results suggest areas of improvement with the mentoring process, those results will be used to initiate program improvements.
  4. Data from mentees’ annual, third year, and promotion evaluations may also be used to judge the effectiveness of the mentoring program, but the mentoring and evaluation processes are intentionally kept separate so that mentoring remains supportive, non-evaluative, and effective.

Notes.

  1. This document was developed & revised following faculty input (October, 2020; September, 2022; August 2024).