Mentoring arrangements are designed to provide support, assistance, and academic and departmental acculturation for new and untenured faculty. They are intended to help young faculty develop their professional profiles, become contributing members of the department and University, and receive help and advice from colleagues as they move through their probationary periods. They are NOT meant as a means to evaluate, review, or judge junior faculty.

1. Each department should assign at least one, preferably two, mentors for each newly hired tenure-track faculty member within the first month of his or her first academic year. At least one mentor should be from the department. Normally, the department Chair discusses the choice of mentors with the faculty member, whose preferences for mentors are taken into consideration.
2. Unless the partnerships prove unsatisfactory, usually the mentor(s) will remain with the probationary faculty person until he or she is tenured.
3. The mentor provides advice, guidance, support, and assistance on professional matters such as teaching and pedagogical development, design of a research/creativity program, professional service, preparing for tenure and promotion, negotiating departmental and University politics, etc. The arrangement is both formal and informal, enabling constructive dialogue. This should assist the junior faculty member, and provide valuable exchanges and creative opportunities for mentors as well. Activities that mentors and mentees might engage in include such things as: observing each other's classes, having coffee or lunch, attending university workshops and other functions together, reading or viewing each other's work, if there are similar interests, and so forth.
4. At least one of the mentors should be tenured. Ideally, if two mentors are selected, they represent some diversity of age, experience, specialization, background, and gender, in order to provide the mentee with a range of advice on academic matters.
5. Ideally, mentors and mentees develop a "mirroring" relationship, where each person offers ideas and support for the other, to minimize the sense of oversight and judgment and enhance the sense of partnership and collegiality.

1. At the start of each new academic year, the Dean will provide a list of the names of new and probationary faculty in their respective departments to each Chair.
2. The Chair will inform the Dean by October 15 the names of the mentor(s) for each person on the list, and will provide a written description of the mentoring arrangement.
3. In October or November, The Dean will host a gathering of all mentors and mentees, to provide an opportunity for new faculty to meet each other as well as senior faculty.
4. At the end of the year, Chairs will review the effectiveness of each mentoring arrangement and report their findings to the Dean.