Asking new faculty what they need

“I want people to feel like this is a space where they can direct themselves and do the things that they want to do with their research, with their teaching, with their publication, with their service,” said Professor of History at the University of Utah Elizabeth “Beth” Clement.

In contrast, the faculty mentoring Clement experienced as a new-hire was largely informal and hierarchical with little guidance about how to balance their teaching, professional obligations, scholarly development and personal life,  , much less any training or guardrails for appropriate behavior.

Myra Washington, senior assistant vice president for faculty support in the Office for Faculty, has long hoped to reward exceptional faculty at the University of Utah by instituting an Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award. “We know the research shows faculty mentoring is crucial to productivity and job satisfaction and one of the most important levers for increasing faculty retention,” said Washington. “I am lucky that in my administrative role I get to see just how many wonderful faculty are willing to…go so far above and beyond for their colleagues. I wanted an award that would recognize this very often unrecognized, but significant effort.”

This year the award was initiated, and two faculty members—Clement and Scott Black—from the College of Humanities were selected.

What the data show

Clement is no stranger to the art of faculty mentoring. “What I have done,” said the Professor of History, “because of what the data show, is that the most effective mentoring is actually peer-to-peer.” That data Clement references stems from earlier attempts she and others on the University Diversity Committee made to formalize standards of mentoring. A variety of best practices emerged from that earlier work, everything from cultivating affinity groups to compensating faculty who participate in informal mentoring programs like what is currently known at the U as S.T.A.R. (Support, Transition, And Retention) Fellows.

“You want people creating relationships with people in their same situation and their same level, and exchanging information and supporting each other,” she explained.

Clement was actually nominated by two separate groups of colleagues who did not know about each other. The nomination and support letters, according to Washington, were distinct to each group—one from peers and one from new faculty, and each group detailed how Clement’s mentorship fed their subsequent career and life successes. “Beth Clement is a master teacher,” said her Department Chair Eric Hinderaker, and “. . . is richly deserving of this inaugural Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award.”

With work supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the American Philosophical Society and the American Council of Learned Societies, Clement was featured prominently in the Emmy Award-winning 2018 documentary about Dr. Kristen Ries and her physician assistant, Maggie Snyder, who were the sole medical team treating HIV/AIDS patients in Utah during the peak of the crisis. A monograph titled The Reckoning: AIDS in Conservative America is the culmination of her celebrated recounting and interpretation of the response to the HIV pandemic in Utah, is slated for publication by University of North Carolina Press.

Mentoring by her example as a scholar, Clement’s networking-based rather than supervisory-, dyad-based approach to new faculty arrivals is exactly what Washington is hoping to reward by instituting the Faculty Mentoring recognition at the U. 

“The professor I am today”

Also in the College of Humanities, English Professor Scott Black has distinguished himself as a scholar of eighteenth-century British literature and the history of the novel. He is currentlyDirector of the U’s celebrated Tanner Humanities Center and former chair of the Department of English.

Black’s mentorship, according to Elizabeth Callaway who led the effort to nominate him for the award, “is distinguished by its consistency, generosity, intellectual rigor, and profound humanity. He has shaped not only individual careers, but also the culture of our department as a whole.”

Lindsey Drager describes Black as being supportive in her first year as a tenure-track creative writing faculty member who has since gone on to win teaching awards and to become one of the most sought-after professors in the PhD program. “Without his insistence that I continue with my somewhat outside-of-the-box teaching, I would not be the professor I am today,” she wrote in her letter of recommendation to the selection committee.

Black says, “All of us entered this profession because we love our subjects and want to learn more about them. Creating an academic culture in which that curiosity and excitement are shared and encouraged is the key to a collegial and productive department. I’m thrilled to receive this recognition, though it’s also a little funny to get an award for doing my favorite part of the job: talking with colleagues about their work and thinking together about how to make it even better.”

Career-line faculty mentoring

While an accomplished scholar with tenure himself, Black’s mentoring extends to non-tenure-line faculty who tend to be on the front-lines of undergraduate teaching. In another letter of recommendation written by Lepa Piquk Marinkovski, the assistant professor (lecturer) wrote about the kindness of both Black and his wife who helped her navigate childcare as she transitioned into single motherhood. She also wrote that one of Black’s teaching philosophies is that “we [should] aim to ‘get out of our students’ ways.’ and that includes not letting awards get to our heads.”

Marinkovski concludes,“This mentor recognition would amuse Scott and that makes me smile. He would be gracious enough to receive it well, and he would be humble enough to know that without his peers and students (especially his students) to share in ideas and passions, he wouldn’t be the kind of educator and leader he is today.”

That kind of humility plays into Clement’s approach to mentoring faculty as well. “Mentoring … is about asking people what they need and trying to get it for them. What do you need to improve your teaching? What do you need to get your book done? … . You assume  they have an idea of what would be helpful, and instead of saying, ‘I know what is right for you, you say, ‘What do you think would be helpful?’

“A mentoring award,” says Black, “is as much about the mentee’s success as the mentor’s. So it’s great to recognize the thriving community we’ve all created here together.”

 

Both Scott Black and Beth Clement were presented the inaugural Excellence in Faculty Mentoring Award by U Provost Mitzi Montoya on August 25.