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FSEC supports faculty mentoring program
The Faculty Senate Executive Committee voted Wednesday to endorse a proposal to establish a university-wide mentoring program that would pair tenure-track and clinical/research faculty with UB colleagues and senior faculty at other institutions.
The Office of the Provost will be responsible for overseeing implementation of the plan, a product of the Commission on Academic Excellence and Equity, said Richelle Allen-King, chair of the commission, a joint committee of the provost and Faculty Senate that is examining issues of concern to faculty, including advancement, mentoring and work-life balance support, path to tenure, recruitment and the tenure review process.
While the commission continues to explore all these topics, members wanted to move forward with creating a mentoring program after a survey revealed that tenure-track faculty felt mentoring was of high importance, but that UB was not doing a good job in that area.
“We want to get helpful policies and practices out there as soon as we can,” Allen-King said. “So rather than waiting for the commission to generate one large report on everything we can have that might be helpful, we’ve decided it’s better to peel off pieces as they’re ready.”
The components of the new mentoring program, as laid out in the proposal the FSEC approved, include the following:
• The program will be implemented for all tenure-track and clinical/research faculty, as well as for tenured associate professors in the first five years after tenure is granted. Mentoring will be optional for full professors and associate professors with more than five years of experience. Each mentee could have multiple mentors, including senior faculty from other institutions in the same field.
• Mentors and mentees will sign off on a mutually agreed upon plan that they will assess each year and report to their department chair. The document should include a detailed plan for mentoring in research, teaching and service—the areas evaluated for promotion and tenure. The mentoring program does not constitute a formal evaluation.
• Chairs would be accountable for the effectiveness of mentor assignments through assessments by deans. Annual department summaries of mentoring assessments should be available to all faculty members.
• Mentoring training, faculty development workshops and resource libraries with information on how faculty members can achieve work-life balance will support mentoring policies.
• Mentoring assignments will be considered to be part of faculty service.
Allen-King and Joseph Gardella Jr., chair of the Commission on Academic Excellence and Equity’s mentoring subcommittee, said when it comes to mentoring, UB lags behind peer institutions, including the University of Michigan and the University of California-San Diego, that have best practices in place.
One important goal of the UB proposal, Allen-King and Gardella Jr. said, is to ensure accountability. While individuals and departments across the institution have exhibited varied levels of dedication to mentoring, the new, university-wide program would help focus those efforts by encouraging mentors and mentees to outline their objectives from the get-go.
Before voting, FSEC members raised a number of concerns about the program, asking, for instance, how small departments with limited resources would manage mentoring. A key reason mentor-mentee relationships fail, a couple of senators pointed out, is a clash of personalities between partners.
Gardella responded that the new program would be flexible, enabling chairs to alter pairings when mismatches become apparent. Senior researchers with similar interests from other institutions or other departments within UB will expand the pool of available mentors in smaller units. Junior faculty who are members of the university’s strategic strengths—eight interdisciplinary areas of expertise the institution is building as part of its UB 2020 long-range plan—could join up with colleagues in those strengths.
Reader Comments
Jim Holstun says:
In a Reporter article of earlier this month, Senate Chair Robert Hoeing proposed transferring powers from the Senate to the Faculty Senate Executive Committee. See http://www.buffalo.edu/ubnow/2010_04_07/faculty_senate.
It would appear that the FSEC has already launched this procedural coup d'etat. The FSEC does not have the power to endorse anything, except for the consideration of the Senate, which is the final deliberative body. So this vote is null and void, and means nothing. Shame on the FSEC for violating its own bylaws.
Posted by Jim Holstun, Professor of English, 04/26/10