Faculty Mentoring
UIC seeks to strengthen its mentoring “culture” by making mentoring a priority and by undertaking and regularizing sound mentoring practices, which are clear and transparent to all parties.
General Guidelines Heading link
- The Director of the School will review the mentor / mentee relationship annually by sending out a confidential survey to both mentors and mentees.
- Mentor and mentee need not be from the same department. Attempts should be made to find a mentor that matches the mentee’s area of research.
- Mentors should be recognized for their efforts in their own annual reviews, and mentoring should be counted as service in promotion and tenure cases.
Policy Heading link
The School of Literatures, Cultural Studies and Linguistics has adopted the following policy:
School Level:
- Mentoring training: The School provides guidelines for the meetings between mentor and mentee. A set of talking points in the form of a checklist will be provided to each mentor and mentee.
- Yearly meeting in the Fall: The EO from each unit and the Director and Associate Director of the School should meet once a year to discuss promotion cases.
- Networking: Once a year Assistant Professors and their mentors from all departments in the School will have a lunch organized by the School. This event will provide networking opportunities for junior faculty.
- The School will pay for the mentor / mentee lunches for up to $25 per person. (*See instructions for reimbursement on p. 3.)
Faculty Level:
Assistant Professors:
- They should have one meeting each semester with their mentors. Mentor and mentee will have a checklist of topics to discuss which will need to be signed. The checklist will be filed with the Director of the School.
- In addition, the Assistant Professor should meet with the EO of his or her department once a year.
Associate Professors:
- We suggest Associates have at least one meeting per year with their mentors.
- We suggest they have at least one meeting per year with their EO. There will be a checklist of topics to be discussed which will need to be signed and filed with the Director of the School.
- Associate professors have the right to opt out of mentoring.
Faculty members with joint appointments:
- The mentoring program should be coordinated between the two departments. The executive officer of the home department should take the lead in developing the mentoring plan.
- Executive Officers should consult each other before assigning service to the faculty member.
Clinical Assistant Professors:
- We suggest one meeting each semester with their mentors. Mentor and mentee will have a checklist of topics to discuss which will need to be signed. The checklist will need to be filed with the Director of the School.
- In addition, we suggest Clinical Assistant Professors meet with the EO of their department once a year.