Committee on Faculty Mentoring - UTDPP1026

Policy Statement

The Committee on Faculty Mentoring is a Committee of the Academic Senate of The University of Texas at Dallas.

The Committee has two main purposes: to establish and maintain a network of mentors for new faculty, and to establish and maintain a program to welcome new faculty, provide advice and assistance beyond initial orientation and provide fora where they can meet senior faculty.

The Committee shall consist initially of twelve faculty members and two representatives of the Office of the Provost. Faculty members shall be nominated by the Committee on Committees in consultation with the Committee for the Support of Diversity and Equity. The Chief Academic Officer or designee, shall serve as the Responsible University Official (RUO). The term of office of the committee members shall be two years, effective September 1 to August 31, staggered in time to make approximately equal numbers of appointments expire each academic year. Members may be reappointed by the President for additional terms. If for any reason a Committee member resigns, the President shall appoint another individual to serve the remainder of the unexpired term. The Chair and Vice Chair are appointed annually by the President.

The chair of the Committee, with the agreement of a majority of the voting members, may add additional members in the course of the year without requiring those members to be approved by the Academic Senate. The terms of such appointments will be either for the remainder of the academic year in which the appointment is made or for a lesser period as determined by the committee.

To establish and maintain the mentoring network, members of the Committee will meet with individual junior faculty on a yearly basis and generate, for each individual, a list of potentially helpful UT Dallas faculty contacts. At the purely professional level, these contacts consist of other faculty members with an ability to be helpful to the junior faculty members' academic and research productivity at UT Dallas, to the fulfillment of their teaching requirements, or to their UT Dallas community/committee involvement.

The Committee also verifies that the identified faculty contacts are willing to share their wisdom and advice on the relevant issues. This duty should not necessarily entail a heavy time commitment on the part of these faculty contacts, but rather, a willingness to be available for brief consultations and questions. A faculty contact person may, under certain circumstances, wish to commit additional time and energy to building a professional relationship. Indeed, this program allows for various levels of involvement in advising the junior faculty member. Assuming the willingness of the faculty contacts, the role of the Committee is to introduce the junior faculty to the relevant contacts. This may be as simple as a call to the faculty contact requesting that they meet briefly with the junior faculty member, or it may involve an informal introductory meeting with a Committee member, faculty contact, and junior faculty member. A third function of the Committee is to meet with the faculty contacts individually at the end of the year, or during the summer, to assess the success of the program. The Committee will make recommendations on needed changes to the program as well as with regard to additional measures of evaluation to be used in program assessment efforts.

To establish and maintain programs for new faculty, the committee will work with the liaison members from the office of the Provost, using a budget that the Provost will provide.

This Committee shall work in conjunction with any other mentoring programs already in existence on campus.

The Committee shall meet annually with the President of the University.