Goal 2.4 Improved Mentoring

For all constituencies, we should improve our approach to mentoring, in particular by seeking a more holistic approach that goes beyond support for academic and professional development to include professionally appropriate support along psychosocial dimensions and equitable distribution of both kinds of support. Holistic mentoring involves taking an interest in one another as human beings; it typically requires partnerships among a range of kinds of advisers and mentors, some who focus more on the academic end and others more on the psychosocial end of a mentee’s experience. Achieving a holistic view of a mentee is likely to require more information-sharing among the people who play mentorship roles in relation to any given individual. Improved use of data, within the parameters of privacy constraints, should support improvements in mentoring. For students, improved mentoring also depends on a well-functioning interface with mental health counseling and effective training for staff, faculty, and academic personnel in how to help students navigate these of complementary resources spanning the spectrum from academic advising to mental health counseling.

FAS Tenure-Track Faculty Mentoring

The dean of FAS made mentoring oftenure-track faculty a central topic at his fall2015 retreat for the FAS academic deans. Together, the deans reviewed the principles underlying the FAS’s AY 2009‒10approach to mentoring and professional development, discussed fresh approaches,and formulated benchmarks to help themevaluate at the upcoming academic planning meetings how well departments/areas were doing.Throughout fall 2015, asthese academic planning discussions tookplace, the Office for Faculty Affairs (OFA)separately conducted focus groups withtenure-track and recently tenured faculty to...

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