Bill Currie created the SEAS Deans Junior Faculty Mentoring Program in 2019 and continues to lead the program. This is a brief description of some aspects of the program, in part so that folks in other departments and universities can benefit from what we’ve learned. First, each pre-tenure, tenure-track faculty member is assigned a multi-mentor team in their first year in SEAS. The multi-mentor team includes two faculty, typically one an Associate Professor and one a full Professor, typically from two different specializations within SEAS. SEAS is a highly interdisciplinary school with faculty in many different disciplines. We try to have one person on the multi-mentor team, but not necessarily both, be from a discipline close to that of the junior faculty member. One reason is that in assigning faculty mentors we have limited breadth in any one field and limited degrees of freedom, for example no one serving on our school’s Promotion and Tenure Committee is allowed to be a formal mentor, which rules out four senior faculty. Another reason is that much of the mentoring of junior faculty need not be field-specific, and it can help to strengthen community across the school by having faculty build relationships across disciplines.

The multi-mentor team meets with the junior faculty member mentee formally, twice per year, in one-hour meetings that are arranged by the Dean’s office. We track all of the multi-mentor teams on a Google sheet and an administrative assistant in the Dean’s office uses this information to schedule all of the meetings in the same month. We do this twice per year, and in one of those two meetings, one of our three deans (Dean, Academic Associate Dean, or Research Associate Dean) also joins — on a rotating basis and based partly on their availability. Meeting twice per year may not seem like much, but prior to this, we had no formal mentoring program, and this seems like a significant improvement. And of course, the mentors-mentees are free to have more frequent contact as they like.

The mentoring meetings have no set format or agenda. They are just a chance for the junior faculty member to have an informal conversation with a couple of more senior faculty in SEAS explicitly about career trajectories and career success, however the team wants to approach it, work-life balance or whatever they would like to discuss, and to give the junior faculty member a chance to ask questions and ask for advice.  Some teams jump right to discussing grants programs to submit to, which is fine, but teams are also encouraged to consider mentoring more broadly.  While we may talk to one another frequently, this is an explicit opportunity to step back, be thoughtful, and focus on our colleagues’ needs and long-term success and career satisfaction.    

There have been some challenges. First, having many new junior faculty hires in a short period made it difficult to set up enough mentoring teams. Senior faculty often say they are happy to be involved, but then when asked to join a specific mentoring team, or more than one, they often find reasons why it isn’t a good time or why someone else would be better, or they’d prefer to mentor someone they already know better. Junior faculty, as well, will often ask for specific mentors who are already over-subscribed, or who have said no. Setting up all of the teams requires a lot of back-and-forth and sometimes a good deal of diplomacy. If you are considering starting a similar mentoring program, I can say that it seems well worth the effort. But at the same time, an important starting point would be a conversation that achieves buy-in from faculty all across the unit, and/or a strong message from the Chair or the Dean that all mid-career and senior-level faculty are expected to participate as mentors when asked.