Faculty Development Through Mentoring: A Case Study in Reaching and Supporting Rural Colleagues

Overview: Faculty-to-faculty mentoring has been identified as a key area for faculty retention, job satisfaction, and improving student success, rural faculty may be the only faculty member at their regional campus in their department and even their respective college. We present a case study for facutly-to-faculty mentoring among rural campuses.Proposal text: Faculty mentoring appears to be an ever-varied experience. Faculty mentoring is identified as non-existent, formal, or informal. Additionally, even though social work’s signature pedagogy is field practicum and graduates are required one-on-one supervision before independent licensure, it is ironic social work has been identified as a late adopter of faculty mentoring programs behind business, education, and medicine and social work has been slow to apply a similar pedagogy to faculty learning and development (Callerday, 2012; Brady & Spencer, 2018). Providing mentors with common interests aids in advancing faculty potential and productivity, fostering positive work environments, and increasing faculty retention (Cross et al, 2019). The research is clear mentoring is an imperative part of faculty development, especially among women and other minority groups in academia (Cross et al, 2019; Callerday, 2012). Hott et al (2018) found faculty, especially non-traditional faculty, generally wanted assistance in everything from research development and understanding promotion and tenure expectations to how to deal with difficult students and creating a positive work-life balance. Both formal and informal mentoring were found to be important, and that faculty preferred a peer-to-peer approach to mentoring (Hott et al, 2018). As a land grant university with regional campuses across the state, often the social work faculty member in the regional campuses at our institution is the only department faculty at their campus and at times, are the only faculty in the college of social sciences and humanities as well. This makes mentoring, formal or informal difficult for regional campus faculty in rural areas. Given the clear positive outcomes of faculty mentoring and desire for faculty to engage in mentorship, we review the beginning stages of implementing formal mentoring across multiple regional campuses, discuss the topics reviewed and addressed in the mentorship process, and provide clear and specific examples of how mentoring has benefited those who have participated. During this case review information for implementing formal mentoring and measuring program success will be addressed and allow participants to take away information necessary in establishing their own mentoring process.