Perlman, B., & McCann, L. I. (1998, Fall). Retaining and Mentoring New Colleagues a.
The Department Chair, 9(2), 15-16.
In a series of previous articles in the Department Chair, we have discussed the
ethics, planning, and nuts and bolts work involved in recruiting new faculty. But what is
the point of all this work if your new colleagues are unhappy, and leave within a few
years of arriving, or stay but withdraw from a full academic life? In this final article, we
discuss what you can do to attend to new faculty to maximize their sense of belonging,
their shared purpose with their colleagues, and to keep them on your faculty.
Prepare For Your New Colleague's Arrival
Retention of new colleagues starts with the simple things. Have their office
cleaned and painted if necessary, and order a name plate for the door. Make sure a
mailbox is assigned, phone connected, and keys to the building, mailbox, and
laboratory are ready to give them. If a computer was ordered, try to have it in their office
and running when they arrive. Put them in contact with other recently hired faculty for
help in finding housing, and urge them to arrive as early as possible to find their away
around the campus and community and settle in.
Mentoring
Assign A Mentor and Require Mentoring
We recommend that a mentor be assigned to each new faculty member and that
attending departmental or university mentor meetings, orientations, workshops and
programs be required. Mentors help new hires to grow into their professional roles and
to become productive faculty members. The best mentors remember their own early
years as faculty, know something about the developmental process a new faculty
moves through, want to work with a junior colleague, are proficient in teaching and
scholarship, and are familiar with the people and processes in the college or university.
Good mentors are patient, knowing that new faculty may resist the idea of taking time
away from lecture preparation or scholarship just to talk, and recognizing it may take
time to establish a relationship.
Mentoring seems to work best in a one-to-one relationship. It need not be done by senior
faculty, nor by someone within the same department. There is value in a mentor from outside
the home department, someone not involved in personnel decisions for the new hire nor with
departmental politics. However, someone within the department needs to work with a new
colleague to educate about its history, current faculty, and its processes and procedures.
General Advice for On-Campus Mentors
We recommend that on-campus mentors:
• Do some reading on new faculty, good teaching, and
successful scholarship.
• Meet regularly with new faculty, about every two weeks.
• Provide an orientation for your new colleagues early in
Include a larger perspective (e.g.,
their first year.
department or institutional history) and small
details
(book orders' due dates, what paperwork
requests can be expected during a semester).
• Meet on- or off-campus, but within walking distance if
new colleague out of the office.
possible. Get the
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• Do not set a rigid agenda. Let the new faculty bring up
issues, but be sensitive to what is not being discussed
(e.g., struggles with lectures or anxieties about
scholarship).
• Discuss the stress of teaching and be prepared for the
small crises which will inevitably occur.
• Know department and university standards for renewal
and tenure so you can ensure that your new colleague is
doing the things that must be done (e.g., obtaining
teaching evaluations, peer reviews of teaching).
• Be focused. Your underlying concern must always be with
professional development.
Specific Areas of Mentoring Responsibility
Teaching.
The mentor should ensure that the new hire receives as much teaching
information and material as possible, and as soon as possible, to ease the process of preparing
and beginning several new classes (at once) in a new teaching environment. The following are
things the mentor can do to increase the chances of a successful first year in the classroom,
laboratory or studio.
• Provide a book or two on teaching, such as McKeachie's
(1994) Teaching Tips.
• As the semester unfolds help the new colleague plan ahead.
Having three sets of student papers due from different
classes on the same day is not good planning.
• Provide information on departmental curricula, philosophy,
syllabi requirements, grading practices, and assessment of
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student outcomes.
• Support risk taking in the classroom. Even if you believe
in the lecture format, encourage new faculty to walk into
a class prepared to lead a
discussion or engage students
in an active learning exercise. New teachers need to
learn about different ways of teaching.
• Assist in coping with student problems such as difficult
students in the classroom, or complaints about grades.
• Help to interpret and use teaching evaluations to improve
teaching.
• Encourage attendance at on- or off-campus forums or
conferences to learn more about teaching.
• Assist in developing or revising a teaching portfolio
after the first year.
Scholarship or Artistic Performance. Because of the necessity of meeting assigned
classes, teaching commands the attention of new faculty. If scholarship or artistic performance
suffers in the process, anxiety and concern will rise. We suggest the following:
• Prepare a scholarly activity plan (Freudenthal &
DiGiorgio, 1989) to focus attention on the need to be
active and manage time effectively.
• Introduce the idea of working on scholarship regularly,
even if only a few hours a week. If new faculty feel
scholarship must be done as it was in graduate school,
with huge amounts of time and all at once, they will
become frustrated and unproductive.
• Have new hires log how their time is actually spent,
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discuss it, and help them make changes if needed.
• Be honest and supportive regarding standards for renewal
and tenure.
• Make sure new faculty receive promised studio or
laboratory space and equipment.
• Review methodological issues prior to data collection, and
offer to read draft manuscripts.
• If on-campus funding is available to support scholarship
or artistic performance, help new colleagues apply. Work
with them to increase the chance of success. If they are
denied support help them read feedback honestly, and
resubmit. Successful scholars all suffer setbacks, but
they persevere.
• Provide information on travel policies and support.
• Suggest conferences where work in progress or supervised
or graduate scholarship can be presented.
undergraduate
• When a new faculty is successful make
sure your colleagues
know it.
Service, Citizenship, and Personnel Decisions. Some of a mentor's most useful
advice involves issues of service, departmental citizenship, and personnel decisions.
• Get new hires talking with others. Urge them to schedule
one or more hours a week in the faculty lounge or visiting
colleagues' offices.
• Discuss how the new hire is getting along with others.
Describe department colleagues' styles and quirks.
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• Point out alternative ways of handling situations in
meetings and committees,
and how to disagree
diplomatically.
• Assist new faculty members in seeking and accepting
service assignments. You do not want them to be
overwhelmed by service.
• Prepare new hires for their first contract renewals. Make
them aware of deadlines, provide a sample of a completed
document, and offer to edit an early draft. Suggest they
begin a file for contract reviews and salary decisions,
and help them organize it.
The Community. Do not underestimate the importance of the non-work environment in
determining whether someone decides to stay with you or leave. Some suggestions:
• Discuss housing preferences, family, hobbies, etc.
• Make sure new faculty attend department, college, and
events so they can meet people in a
university social
relaxed social atmosphere.
• Inform your new colleagues of campus and community events.
If you attend, ask them to join you.
Off-Campus Mentoring
Relationships with mentors on other campuses should be encouraged. New faculty need
someone to talk with about their career and job, and to provide a perspective on their
complaints and achievements.
Points of Entry Made Easy
We recommend providing new faculty with lists of helpful individuals in various
capacities, both on- and
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off-campus. Include titles, phone numbers, and who has a relationship with them (you, another
colleague, a spouse). Examples of such entry points include:
Campus
• Budget/Accounting (travel forms, reimbursement, etc.)
• Purchasing
• Computers (purchasing, service, e-mail, networking, etc.)
• Media services (making high quality posters or
overheads)
• Library (interlibrary loans, reserving materials)
• Dean of Students (troubled students, cheating, etc.)
• Teaching Excellence Center
• Faculty Development Program
• Personnel (health coverage, W-2 forms, paychecks)
• A helpful custodian
Off-Campus
• Physicians, attorneys, dentists, accountant, etc.
• Travel agent
• Real Estate agent
• Day Care, schools, baby sitters
• Auto mechanic
• Home owning (plumber, electrician, remodeler, etc.)
Conclusion
Take the same care, thought, and attention in helping new colleagues adjust to and grow
as academics as you did in recruiting them. Attention to your colleagues pays dividends in
maximizing the chances they will survive their first year or two with you, and be productive and
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knowledgeable department members. They will be grateful for the support you gave, and in
return seeing the academic world through the experiences of new colleagues can refresh and
invigorate more senior faculty, confirming both the joys and difficulties of academic work.
a
Baron Perlman and Lee McCann are Professors of Psychology, University of Wisconsin
Oshkosh. This article is based on material from their book, RECRUITING GOOD COLLEGE
FACULTY: PRACTICAL ADVICE FOR A SUCCESSFUL SEARCH, Anker, 1996.
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References and Recommended Readings
Boice, R. (1992). The New Faculty Member: Supporting and Fostering Professional
Development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Braskamp, L. A., Fowler, D. L., & Ory, J. C. (1984). Faculty development and
achievement: A faculty's view. Review of Higher Education, 7, 205-222.
Fink, L. D. (1990). New faculty members: The professoriate of tomorrow. Journal of Staff,
Program, and Organization Development, 8, 235-245.
Freudenthal, N. R., & DiGiorgio, A. J. (1989). New faculty mentoring: The institution as
mentor. Journal of Staff, Program, and Organization Development, 7, 67-71.
Gibson, G. W. (1992). Good Start: A Guidebook For New Faculty In Liberal Arts
Colleges. Bolton, MA: Anker.
Lavery, P. T., Boice, R., Thompson, R. W., & Turner, J. L. (1989). Mentoring for new
faculty. Journal of Staff, Program, and Organization Development, 7, 39-46.
Levinson, D. J. (1978). The Seasons of a Man's Life. NY: Knopf.
McKeachie, W. J. (1994). Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory For College
and University Teachers (9th Ed.). Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath.
Perlman, B., & McCann, L. I. (1996). Recruiting Good College Faculty: Practical Advice
for a Successful Search. Bolton, MA: Anker.
Sands, R. G., Parson, L. A., & Duanne, J. (1991). Faculty mentoring faculty in a public
university. Journal of Higher Education, 62, 174-193.
Schuster, J. H., Wheeler, D. W., et al. (Eds.). (1990). Enhancing Faculty Careers:
Strategies For Development and Renewal. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.