Academic

Mentoring New Faculty

By Jacqueline Lipton

Despite the hiring freezes this past year, many law schools, including my own, will be welcoming new tenure track faculty and perhaps some new visitors as well over coming months.  So now might be a good time to think about that old mentoring question (at least it's a break from thinking about exam grading).

In particular, it might be nice to think about what senior faculty can do to ease the transition of new junior faculty over the summer months and to help engage them with the local and broader law school communities.

Of course, there's the question of whether or not they should be encouraged to go to the AALS new law teachers' conference.  I generally think this is a good idea, even if just for the opportunity to meet new teachers from other schools and to begin to form a support network.  New teachers can also be encouraged to sign up to the new law teachers' list-serve to keep in touch with their group of incoming peers.

Whether or not the school has a formal faculty mentoring program, at least one or two senior faculty (maybe associate deans for research and development) should take it upon themselves to sit down with new faculty and help plan the beginnings of a scholarship and conference attendance program for the next few years, including discussion of whether the AALS Annual Meeting is a good venue for that particular teachers'/scholars' development and/or whether there are other good external venues. 

Internal development venues should also be identified ie if your school or university has a teaching support group or particular research support initiatives that are available to junior faculty.  The pros and cons of providing works in progress to home faculties should also be discussed with incoming faculty.  Bloggers have recently shared some useful perspectives on the extent to which half-baked scholarship should be shared with home faculty (although the exact answer to this conundrum in any given instance is likely to depend on faculty culture at a given school).

At least some senior faculty should be prepared to take on an informal mentoring role early on, and offer to visit our colleagues' classes and read their work (and seriously mean it and give feedback in a timely fashion).  We should also be alert to opportunities to promote the teaching and scholarship of our new colleagues to the wider community in terms of involving them in conferences and symposia both at the home institution and elsewhere.  Remember that a lot of these new folks will already have plans to present papers or develop teaching strategies over the summer - and we should make ourselves available to help and comment.

Gee, this is sounding a bit preachy now.  I guess I've been on appointments committees for too long ...

But seriously, good luck to all those new teachers and scholars just starting out this coming year.  I hope you all find helpful mentors and friends, and that you enjoy your entry into the best profession in the world.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on April 29, 2009 (boomark / email).