Tenure Track Faculty Mentorship in Teaching, Scholarship, and Service
Tenure track (TT) faculty balance a three-legged stool of responsibilities. Understanding the SU culture and expectations regarding teaching, scholarship, and service is an ever changing and ever expanding refinement of professional responsibilities. CFEST recognizes that all faculty need support, and that mentoring TT faculty often requires more than one year of support. New faculty and TT faculty have various internal opportunities to enhance their teaching, scholarship, and service. In order to guide all TT and tenured faculty through their continued professional development, CFEST offers financial compensation and professional development initiatives. The Campus Support and Grants Administration subcommittees of CFEST offer a number of initiatives, including Faculty Training and Continued Education Grants, Travel Grants to present at national and international professional conferences and meetings. In addition, TT faculty are invited to join Teaching Teams, interdisciplinary faculty professional development conversations designed to meet a number of faculty needs, including technology, pedagogy, assessment, and other topics.
Mentorship Overview
New faculty are assigned a department mentor that often informally serves well beyond the first year. This department mentor guides the new faculty member through department, college and SU practices, as well as serves as a resource to ease the adjustment into the SU and local communities. Some new faculty need formal mentorship that extends beyond the first year, so the TT Faculty Mentorship is a service that matches TT faculty in years two through five with a mentor from another department or college. This mentor provides advise and support in one or all three areas of responsibilities. TT faculty can request a specific mentoring specialization, such as teaching, or they can receive support in all three areas. This mentoring relationship can be especially valuable as new faculty ready themselves for tenure and promotion.
TT Faculty Mentors in Teaching
Mentors in this area of specialization offer TT faculty:
- facilitates a systematic and data-driven examination of course documents to guide the mentee’s articulation of effective instruction (see The Role of the Teaching Mentor as an Instructional Coach)
- descriptions and resources that outline effective instructional methods that can be adapted to large and small class sizes (see The Role of the Teaching Mentor as an Instructional Coach and Role of the Teaching Mentor as a Pedagogical Expert)
- descriptions and resources that profile authentic assessment measures and using assessment data to determine students' strengths and limitations (see The Role of the Teaching Mentor as an Instructional Coach)
- descriptions and resources that engage students in course discussions, service learning, and research (The Role of the Teaching Mentor as a Pedagogical Expert)
- suggestions for interpreting course evaluation data, specially in relation to the narrative describing SU teaching used in the tenure and promotion portfolio materials (see The Role of the Teaching Mentor as an Instructional Coach)
- advise and suggestions relating to curriculum and course design, as well as the SU process for course or program approval (The Role of the Teaching Mentor as a Pedagogical Expert)
TT Faculty Mentors in Scholarship
Mentors in this area of specialization offer TT faculty:
- descriptions of practices and resources that enhance professional scholarship in an expertise area or through an interdisciplinary approach
- descriptions of internal and/or external grant writing procedures
- suggestions for describing scholarship, specially in relation to the narrative describing SU teaching used in the tenure and promotion portfolio materials
TT Faculty Mentors in Service
Mentors in this area of specialization offer TT faculty:
- suggestions for participating in SU shared governance