Mentoring Mini Grants

The mutual mentoring model is flexible and network-based, building on the premise that faculty who have mentors are more successful overall and that multiple mentors better serve a faculty member’s interests and needs. The model includes the following characteristics:

• Mentoring partnerships with a wide variety of individuals, including peers, near peers, tenured faculty, chairs, administrators, librarians, and students;
• Mentoring approaches that accommodate the partners’ personal, cultural, and professional preferences for contact (e.g., one-on-one, small group, group, and/or online);
• Partnerships that focus on specific areas of experience and expertise (e.g., teaching) rather than generalized, “one-size-fits-all” knowledge;
• Benefits to not only the person traditionally known as the “protégé” or “mentee,” but also the person traditionally known as the “mentor;”
• A sense of empowerment in which new, early-career, and underrepresented faculty are not seen or treated solely as the recipients of mentoring, but as proactive, intentional agents of their own career development.

Testimonials from previous recipients:

• Thank you again for letting us take advantage of this fantastic program. Not only have we been able to share our work and comment on the work of others, but we’ve also fashioned a very supportive network that has gone beyond the original purpose of our meetings.  
• I am deeply appreciative that Providence College and the Center for Teaching Excellence are willing to support this aspect of faculty development. It is a long-term investment in my well-being and success, which I anticipate will have significant benefits to the College over time.
• The Mentoring Mini-Grant allowed me to find support for research by developing my network of peer and senior mentors. Developing a research and writing plan in conversation with my mentors helped ease my transition from the PhD to my first faculty appointment here at PC. I especially appreciate the Mini-Grant’s Mutual Mentoring model, as my peer mentors and I have been able to share our similar hurdles as early-career scholars and have benefited from each other’s experiences of navigating them. In my field especially, the scholars, although sizable, are scattered in research institutions here and abroad, so the grant was critical for me to be able to connect with many of them in one international conference. I want to sincerely thank you for making this very fruitful opportunity possible and hope that the Mentoring Mini-Grant remains available for faculty for many years to come.

Source: Yun, J. & Sorcinelli, M. D. (2009). When mentoring is the medium: Lessons learned from a faculty development initiative. To Improve the Academy, 27, 365-384.