Resource of the Week #112: A Resource on Faculty Mentoring

Hello again. I’m now back from Sri Lanka. I enjoyed facilitating the AuthorAID workshop on teaching research communication.

The workshop ran Monday through Friday. As is common in AuthorAID workshops, the last part was slightly flexible, to accommodate participants’ requests.

On Thursday, I asked the participants whether they would like information on additional topics. One requested topic was how to mentor faculty members.

I hadn’t given previous presentations on this topic. But fortunately, some Web searching yielded resources on it. One of them is now our Resource of the Week.

This resource, titled “Faculty Mentoring Paper Summary”, comes from the USC (University of Southern California) Center for Excellence in Teaching. Many concepts in it also apply to other mentoring—such as serving as an AuthorAID mentor.

Among topics discussed in this resource are the following:

• myths about mentoring
• mentoring roles (advisor, role model, coach, and advocate)
• qualities of a good mentor
• benefits of being a mentor
• mentor-related activities

In addition, there’s a checklist for mentors. And there’s a list of mentoring activities for department chairs.

I encourage you to look at this resource and other mentoring resources from the USC center.

Until the next post—

Barbara