Mentoring Programs

To supplement departmental mentoring activities, the college offers an evolving set of programs that provide junior faculty with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for success in their academic roles. Our programs are grounded in recommendations from literature in academic medicine and focus on best practices for supporting faculty and aiding their personal and professional development.

Mentoring unequivocally benefits faculty and leads to greater job satisfaction. Mentoring can improve faculty’s feelings of academic self-efficacy and can help in the development of professional networks. Networks are important because “successful higher education faculty, those who get promoted and tenured, who get recognized for contributions, who produce more and significant research, frequently consult colleagues.” Evidence suggests mentoring increases outputs like publications in peer-reviewed outlets and grant support.

CHM Mentoring Circles

In the spring of 2021, a focus group of fixed term faculty and academic specialists in the college provided input on mentoring needs for faculty in these appointment systems.  The CHM Mentoring Circles program is built on the model of the Mentoring Circles programming from the AAMC Group on Faculty Affairs and leverages both mentor-mentee and peer mentor relationships. It supplements departmental mentoring programs by providing cross-departmental networking and support for faculty in non-tenure systems as they prepare for their first promotion action. Health programs faculty, fixed term faculty, academic specialists, and research faculty are eligible to participate.

Tenure System Mentoring Program

In the fall of 2005, a college-level Faculty Excellence Task Force offered recommendations to improve the support for tenure-system faculty in the College of Human Medicine. The Tenure System Mentoring Program supplements the work of departmental mentoring programs by providing targeted mentoring for junior faculty on the path to tenure at Michigan State University.