This presentation was an overview of the College of Southern Maryland’s faculty mentor program for new faculty members, which pairs experienced faculty mentors with newly-hired faculty with the goal of helping partners to develop their teaching skills and knowledge of the college’s resources. You will then learn how technology can make it easier to improve the program. Finally, those involved in other mentor programs can share ideas for how we can all improve our mentoring programs. Attendees will discuss how to improve faculty mentoring, describe best practices from their faculty mentoring program, and compare and contrast ways to gather and review feedback from those who use the program.
1. John Wilson, Professor, College of Southern Maryland
Oars Against the Current: Using Technology to
Improve Faculty Mentoring
Session 3.11. January 5, 2017
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7. OARS AGAINST THE CURRENT
College Of Southern Maryland Faculty Mentoring Committee
Photos by John Wilson unless noted otherwise.
John Wilson, Professor, College of Southern Maryland, johnw@csmd.edu.
Oars Against the Current: Using Technology to Improve Faculty Mentoring
Thank you for choosing to come today. Feel free to ask questions or make comments as they occur to you.
Any teachers here today? Anyone have anything to do with a mentor program?
What do you wish to leave with?
Blausee, Switzerland
Photo by John Wilson
Pop quiz!
Which one is the mentor?
Well either could be the mentor. But the mentor should realize that the partner may have as much to share as the mentor. The mentor may be an expert on the boat or the lake, that is the mentor will have expertise that the partner needs, but the partner may be very experienced and can also mentor the mentor.
So it is always worthwhile to explore each other’s history and determine who will teach who what.
And remember what Heinlein said, “When one teaches, two learn.”
Lake Thun (Thunersee) Switzerland
Photo by John Wilson
When a mentor is paired with a partner neither should feel like this.
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Sir Winston Churchill
St. George's, Newfoundland, Canada
Photo by John Wilson
How can we engineer success in matching a mentor to a mentee?
Who should choose the mentor?
Who should decide which mentor goes with each mentee?
What qualities does a good mentor have?
How do we measure the partnership?
How do we learn of success or of failure?
Lake Thun (Thunersee) Switzerland
Photo by author
It was Nick. Nick Carraway who said it. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Life’s river does have a strong current so we need a way to move upstream.
Western Brook Pond, Newfoundland, Canada
Photo by John Wilson
An overview of CSM Faculty Mentoring Program and how to use feedback to improve the faculty mentoring program.
Lake Thun (Thunersee) Switzerland
Photo by John Wilson
The CSM Faculty Mentor Committee administers the program and has two co-chairs who serve for two years. There is also an assistant co chair who serves for two years and then becomes one of the co chairs when a co-chair steps down.
There is also a coordinator who helps do the administration so we can track mentor partnerships. There is also a backup coordinator.
Overview
The goal of the faculty mentoring program at the College of Southern Maryland is to provide sharing partnerships to foster success in the classroom and to encourage creativity in teaching.
The program includes three kinds of mentoring situations:
1. Division mentoring for new full-time and part-time faculty 2. Division mentoring for new faculty 3. Cross-divisional mentoring for experienced faculty who wish to improve their skills (e.g. distance learning).
These mentoring partnerships are available on campuses in Charles, Calvert and St. Mary's Counties.
Blausee, Switzerland
Photo by John Wilson
The faculty mentor committee oversees the program but management has to power to act where the committee can’t. The committee can make suggestions like consider choosing mentors early so they and the mentees have time to prepare for the semester. Only the division chairs can make this happen no matter how many times it is suggested.
Thunersee, Switzerland
Photo by John Wilson
No matter how good your faculty mentoring program is, it could be better. Once you start using your mentor program it is launched into the river of life and the river has a strong current. Without oars the program will move downstream and our destination is upstream. Though we may never reach it we do wish to move towards it.
St. George's, Newfoundland, Canada
Photo by John Wilson
One way to improve the faculty mentor program is to listen to words, still warm, whispered by those who use it.
Photo by PowerPoint
There are many ways to collect and review feedback from mentors and partners.
This is a screenshot of the CSM Mentor Evaluation Form (online)
Reviewing and acting on feedback allows the program to improve.
Thun, Switzerland
Photo by John Wilson
It is also important to preserve the feedback and document action taken and share this with management.
One way to collect feedback, save and store it, and document what action is taken is to use Cloud computing.
If where you live you have more than one computer, tablet, printer, or other network device that can “see” each other and share with each other then that network is represented as a cloud.
The Internet is referred to as a cloud, too, and its various services offered there are known as cloud computing.
In this image you can see the clouds reflected on the surface of the lake. They appear to be close enough to touch although they are really quite out of reach.
When you edit a file in the cloud you can do so on your computer or online. If you edit the file on your computer what you do is synchronized with where the file is stored online.
Alaska
Photo by John Wilson
Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive both allow the creation of online forms to capture feedback submitted by mentors and mentees. Online forms link to a spreadsheet that stores feedback. Online forms eliminate the creation, distribution and recovery of evaluations. They also allow users anonymity so they may alert you to what is good and bad about the program. Then one person can copy the feedback from the spreadsheet into an OneNote or Word file, also in the cloud. The link to this file is then sent to the committee, and the feedback can be reviewed for suggestions to improve the program. The annual report can store feedback and actions taken.
This is a screenshot of the CSM Partner Evaluation Form (online)
Review of the CSM Faculty Mentoring Program website and Google Drive and OneDrive.
You can get to the CSM Faculty Mentoring Web Site by using a search engine with the terms:
CSM Faculty Mentoring or use the link above.
The web site shows who the co-chairs and coordinator are and some instructions for mentors to follow.
Links at the bottom of the page will go to:
Executive summary: a Word Online document with an overview of the program
The program: another Word Online document with all the details
By using links to Word online documents we can quickly update the files either online or by using personal or office computers without having to update the webpage which saves time.
Next are three links to Google Drive forms linked to a spreadsheet so as users fill out the form it is stored in the spreadsheet and we can review it:
CSM Faculty Mentor/Partner Agreement and Development Plan-form filled out by mentor and partner at the beginning of the semester
Mentor Evaluation Form-used by mentor to reflect on how it went
Partner Evaluation Form-used by partner to reflect on how it went
The CSM Web Faculty Survival Checklist (another Word Online file) link is used by each pair to make sure all the required information is covered. This file is updated annually.
There is a link to our presentation to mentors –this is a PowerPoint Online file that can be edited again online or from computers and it too is updated annually.
The last link is to the Annual Report-this is a OneNote notebook with annual reports for the past five years and all the feedback provided by mentors and partners when they filled out the above forms is included.
It was not Nick. Nick Carraway did not say this:
So we beat on, oars against the current, improving our mentor program by listening to words, still warm whispered by those who use it.
Western Brook Pond
Newfoundland, Canada
Photo by John Wilson
The word mentor comes from Homer.
In Homer’s Odyssey as Odysseus prepares to leave for the Trojan War he asks Mentor, an old friend, to guide his son Telemachus until he returns.
Mentor does not appear at all in the Iliad. Often when he appears in the Odyssey it is not Mentor but Athena who has assumed his shape.
Eucharis, Telemachus and Mentor in a scene from Les aventures de Télémaque (1699) by François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
This popular novel describes the travels of Telemachus and Mentor (most often Mentor is Pallas Athena in disquise) and this book helped to bring mentor into dictionaries around the world with a meaning of a trusted guide. Eucharis does not appear in Homer’s works.
English translation at Archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/adventuresoftele00fnel
French version at Gutterberg:
Les aventures de Télémaque suivies des aventures d'Aritonoüs by Fénelon
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30779
François de Salignac de La Mothe-Fénelon
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francois-de-Salignac-de-La-Mothe-Fenelon#ref93084
Image:
Artist: Raymond Auguste Quinsac Monvoisin Title: Telemachus and Eucharis Date: 1824
http://collections.artsmia.org/search/Eucharis
Telemachus and Eucharis, 1824
http://collections.artsmia.org/art/2542/telemachus-and-eucharis-raymond-auguste-quinsac-monvoisin
Questions?
Ideas for how we can all improve our mentoring programs.
Near Crystal, MN
Photo by John Wilson
Blausee, Switzerland
Photo by author
Blausee, Switzerland
Photo by author
Photos by author unless noted otherwise.
Thank you for choosing to come today. I hope you will feel free to ask questions or make comments as they occur to you.
Blausee
Photo by author
The mentor committee has two co-chairs who serve for two years. There is also an assistant co chair who serves for two years and then becomes on of the co chairs.
There is also a coordinator who helps do the administration so we can track mentor partnerships. There is also a backup coordinator so if something happens someone can fill in who knows how to do the job.
Lake Thun Switzerland
Photo by author