We are still in the winter intersession at the college where I work, and I’m trying to use some of these quieter January days to work on projects that take a bit more focus (though I admit that focus is definitely a challenge right now with so much Covid uncertainty). I’m working with several colleagues across my university on plans for a pilot mentoring initiative, which has got me reading about and thinking about mentoring in all its forms — formal and informal, peer and nonpeer, the roles of mentor and mentee — more than usual.
When I first started at the college where I work almost 14 (!) years ago as Head of Instruction, there was a formal mentoring program for new faculty in the Library and other departments. I participated in that during my first year — I was paired for a few lunches and meetings with a tenured faculty member in another department, and it was useful to learn from her perspectives on the college. While the college no longer has the same formal mentoring program, a new faculty orientation program has been developed that I think meets many of the same mentoring goals. Faculty in the Library and other departments move through a daylong orientation in late summer, and come back together for several additional meetings with more experienced faculty throughout their first year. This programming helps new faculty learn more about the expectations for their work, including service and scholarship, and also helps build a cohort of faculty from different departments in the college, which I think is especially valuable for Library faculty.
In my own work in the Library as a supervisor, mentoring is a huge component of my job and something that I really enjoy. We don’t have a formal mentoring program in the library, in part because there are many folx in our library who are a department of one, and it’s proven more useful for librarians in those roles to connect with colleagues at the other libraries in our consortial university who do similar work. My colleagues and I all engage in informal peer mentoring — I’ve written a bit in the past on the ways we try to support library faculty research and scholarship — and we discuss service opportunities (and challenges) both formally during my meetings with colleagues and informally in department meetings or otherwise. I try to plan a meeting at least once a year to check in and see where folx are at in their mentoring wants and needs, and to talk about changes we might make to help meet them.
As I draft these plans for the pilot mentoring initiative I’ve also been paying more attention to myself as a mentee or potential mentee. At this point in my career there seems to be lots of overlap between mentoring and networking (maybe that Venn diagram is trending toward a circle?). I have definitely appreciated colleagues in leadership roles who’ve discussed their and my careers with me, discussions that do have a mentoring feel to them. And while I admit that Twitter’s been more challenging than usual for me recently (see above re: Covid uncertainty), as a longtime Twitter user I’m so appreciative of Library Twitter which I think can also allow for informal mentoring (and mentee-ing). I try to be available on Twitter in that way, especially when jobs are posted at my college or university.
I’m excited about the pilot mentoring program my colleagues and I are planning, and am looking forward to moving it forward this semester. Have you had good (or even not so good) experiences as a mentor or mentee? We’d love to hear about them in the comments.
