Mentoring is a critically important component of the employee development process. As faculty members, serving as a mentor is an important service component to support newer faculty hires. As an Organization, the University of Maryland Extension requires that mentors be assigned to all Tenure Track or Professional Track Faculty which are assigned by Program Leaders. For our Professional Track Faculty, mentors will support them via advice and counsel during their onboarding year and further into the opportunity for first promotion. The UME SNAP-Ed program has a structured mentoring process within their program.
Following an initial meeting between the mentor and mentee, there is an expectation for quarterly meetings to check in and review progress on program planning and teaching plans, as well as the mentees' professional development growth. There is also an annual meeting held with the Associate Dean/Associate Director for progress updates.
For Tenure Track Faculty, Mentors are assigned to support the mentee up until 5-year mandatory tenure review. The mentor will more likely be assigned as the chair of the committee who will ready the candidate for review. In addition to program planning, teaching advice, and the mentees' professional development growth, the mentor will advise the mentee on scholarship trajectory and establish baseline data via a needs assessment to launch their programming focus that should lead to outcomes. Further, the mentor can counsel the mentee on conference presentations, scholarship writing, research projects, and Extension publications. The relationship between the mentee and mentor is hopefully a positive, collegial support that can help nurture the junior faculty member toward success.