Mentoring Curriculum

 

The following workshops will be offered periodically and open to all faculty on campus. They can also be made available for individual departments or other groups on campus. Contact Heather Nichols for more information.

1. Communicating Effectively with Mentees and Mentors
This is a two-hour workshop. In the first half, we present the essential building blocks of effective communication—personal awareness, emotional intelligence and active listening—and reinforce this information with interactive exercises. The second half of the workshop focuses on specific challenges to mentor-mentee communication. Communication skills and pitfalls will be demonstrated by workshop facilitators, and mentoring 'case vignettes' will be used so that participants can practice new approaches and techniques in a supportive environment.

2. Balancing Work-Life: The Role of Mentoring
To what extent can a mentor assist their protégé in successfully balancing work with their personal values and commitments? What are the responsibilities and potential pitfalls for both mentee and mentor in this important domain? These issues and others are explored through the use of interactive case scenarios.

3. Understanding Academic Advancement
The academic advancement process, including the normal review for merit and promotion, the expectations by campus, school, and department, and the requirements by rank and series, is complex. A clear understanding of the process is critical to optimize chances for academic success. All mentors, including career and research mentors, must understand the academic review process to optimally advise mentees.

4. Mentoring and Diversity
One of the goals of a mentoring program is to help attract and support a diverse faculty population. However, diversity can bring special challenges to the mentoring relationship. Through reflective exercises and discussion of vignettes participants will gain skills needed to work more effectively in the context of diverse mentoring relationships.

Other workshops are under development. Please contact Heather Nichols or Mitchell Feldman if you are interested in assisting in curriculum development.