Overview
In their second year at SPS, new full-time faculty have the opportunity to select one or two mentors from among full-time SPS faculty. (In their initial year, new faculty mentoring is provided by the Associate Dean of the administrative unit or a senior faculty member they designate).
Mentors may be selected from within or beyond the mentee’s home academic unit. Mentors and mentees should meet approximately 4 times during the academic year. This mentoring relationship will last two years. After this first cycle, mentees may select an additional one or two new mentors for another two-year period.
Mentoring builds collegiality within SPS and enables new faculty to seek advice or share experiences with more senior faculty members who can provide perspectives on teaching approaches, research, publishing, work-life balance, and other professional concerns.
The SPS Mentoring Network Program is structured on a mentee-activated basis.
See the ‘How it Works’ section for further details and FAQs.
Phase I of this program (AY 2025) targets new full-time faculty. Phase II will target adjunct faculty.
Selecting a Mentor
Once you have completed a year of service as a full-time faculty member at SPS, you can start developing a mentoring network. Start at the beginning of the Academic Year (September) by reviewing the mentor profiles below, which are organized by academic unit. You can select mentors from within your unit or beyond, from other parts of SPS.
Select one or two mentors based on your interests. In addition to links to their professional profile, each mentor has listed their preferred mentoring topics.
Initiate contact by clicking on "Request as Mentor" and filling out the form, which asks for your name and contact details, and reasons why you have selected this specific mentor. This should be done no later than October 15. Matches are made on a first-come basis.
Once a match is confirmed, you should initiate the first meeting with your mentor, and ensure that you meet your mentors a minimum of four times a year.
How it Works
Mentoring Cycles and Timing
After the initial year of onboarding in their home academic unit, new full-time faculty may select mentors in two cycles, each lasting two years. Mentees may select mentors from within or beyond their home academic unit, and should review the profiles of volunteer mentors to identify individuals who can offer the specific type of support of interest to the mentee.
The mentor/mentee matching process will be opened annually by the Office of Faculty Affairs at the beginning of the academic year and mentees should make their selection by October 15. The OFA will ensure that matching of mentors to mentees will be done on a first come basis, making it worthwhile to engage in this process in a timely manner.
It is up to the mentee to initiate contact with the mentor once a match is confirmed, and to organize the first meeting. Each mentee and mentor should meet at least 4 times a year, and the mentoring arrangement lasts for two years. After two years, the cycle is renewed and the mentee can select one or two new mentors. In order to diversify the mentee’s professional network, the existing mentor(s) cannot be renewed in the second two-year cycle.
Feedback / Assessment
Evaluations will take place once a year:
- In June by survey and focus groups
- Information regarding survey and focus groups will be communicated in due time
What to Expect
Mentoring styles differ, as do the needs of new faculty. Mentoring need not be a conventional hierarchical relationship between senior and newer faculty members. It can involve a wide range of modalities to support faculty success via collegiality and knowledge-sharing, professional networking, and partnerships that combine career guidance with collegiality.
Each mentee/mentor dyad is encouraged to develop the communication modalities and mentoring topics that suit the mentee’s needs and the mentor’s capacities.
The mentee/mentor pair should agree on a meeting schedule, entailing at least two meetings per semester. They should discuss the mentee’s needs and collaborate on setting short and longer-term goals, as well as their own benchmarks for assessing progress over time. This process can be as informal or formal as the pair finds appropriate. They should also agree on communication frequency and means of maintaining contact. See the FAQs for further details on the roles of mentees and mentors.
Volunteer to Become a Mentor
The success of this program lies first with our full-time faculty mentors. Please volunteer today! Full-time faculty with six or more years of experience at SPS (or equivalent time as a faculty member elsewhere) are eligible and will receive an additional $250 in their professional development fund, should they be paired with a mentee. Please review the FAQs for mentors to learn about the benefits and ensure that you meet the criteria.
When filling out the form below, please mention the specific mentoring themes/areas of expertise that should be listed under your profile.
Why Mentoring Matters
Karen Krahulik and Anne Marie Goetz, Vice Dean of Faculty and the Director of the Mentoring Program
In the spirit of advancing and strengthening all SPS faculty, we are thrilled to announce the launch of the SPS Faculty Mentoring Program. For new SPS Faculty, we hope you will take this opportunity to develop a network of mentors specific to your career advancement needs. The system allows new faculty to identify their own mentors, choosing from a list of faculty with diverse academic and industry experiences. We encourage new faculty to seek advice on issues ranging from delivering excellence in teaching, research, and industry engagement, to meeting expectations around collegiality and service to the SPS and NYU community.
For more senior and established faculty, we hope you will enjoy mentoring incoming, newer colleagues. This will be a wonderful way not only to share your valuable experience and expertise but also to help build a supportive environment across SPS. Our goal is to build community while enhancing both performance and job satisfaction.
Phase I of the SPS Mentoring Network Program begins in AY 2025 and focuses on providing mentors for new full-time faculty members.
Phase II, to be launched at a later date, will address adjunct faculty mentoring.
FAQs
Mentees
Is it mandatory to select a mentor? to collapse content
No, but it is strongly encouraged. Ideally a mentee/mentor relationship should evolve organically but that does not always happen in a busy NYU School. The SPS Mentoring Network Program is designed to overcome obstacles to obtaining helpful advice for adjusting to the SPS environment.
Must I select more than one mentor?
No, however, the option of selecting two mentors is intended to help you develop a professional support network to address the full range of your interests and needs, unless you find that all of this can be covered by one mentor.
Can I keep the same mentor(s) after the first two year cycle?
No. The system is designed to help diversify and expand your network of professional guidance and support by selecting one or two new mentors at the end of your third year if you wish.
Is the mentor network program only for new full-time faculty?
Phase I (AY 2025) is for new full-time faculty who have completed one year at SPS, including those who have moved from adjunct to full-time positions. Phase II of the program will be open to adjunct faculty members, and the dates for Phase II will be announced in advance.
What are my responsibilities as a mentee?
The SPS Mentoring Network Program is designed to be mentee-initiated, which means that you not only select your preferred mentor(s) but you also initiate the first meeting. Prior to that meeting you should provide your mentor(s) with your CV, teaching portfolio, research statement, and other materials relevant to educating your mentor on you capabilities and interests
Mentees also commit to:
- Arranging the meeting schedule over the academic year, and the agenda for each meeting to ensure a productive discussion;
- Preparing for meetings with mentors by identifying goals, or challenges, that you wish to discuss with their mentors;
- Taking the initiative to follow up on discussions and taking action to achieve goals or to address problems;
- Seeking and reflecting upon feedback;
- Respecting diversity across gender/ethnicity/race/age/sexual orientation/culture/religion;
- Developing or deepening academic, scholarly, or professional independence;
- Respecting personal boundaries;
- Providing feedback to SPS via the annual survey on the mentor network program or via communication with the faculty director of the program.
Mentors
What are the qualifications of a mentor?
Mentors will typically have at least 6 years of experience at SPS or at other Schools in NYU and be at the Associate Professor level and above. These rank and time-in-service requirements are desirable to ensure that mentors are familiar with SPS and NYU systems, but there can be exceptions in cases of highly experienced faculty with less extensive experience at SPS or NYU, or with significant and relevant industry and academic experience.
How do I volunteer to be a mentor?
Faculty across the School will be asked to volunteer as mentors by June 1 of every year. Prior to volunteering, each would-be mentor should have a conversation with the Associate Dean of their academic unit, who should ensure that no individual is over-committed with other SPS service engagements. In such cases, individuals may be asked to postpone engagement in the mentoring program. The opportune moment for this conversation can be the annual discussion of the Faculty Activity Report between each full-time faculty member and their Associate Dean.
Is it mandatory to volunteer to be a mentor?
No. However, mentoring junior and new faculty is considered a valuable contribution to collegiality both within academic units and SPS as a whole.
Is there compensation for providing mentoring services?
Appreciation for your contributions to collegiality will be expressed by the provision of an additional $250 to your Professional Development Fund annually.
What do I need to do if I go ahead as a volunteer mentor?
You will be asked to fill out a form in which you will provide a few bullet points on the specific areas in which you feel particularly qualified to mentor incoming faculty. These areas may include your individual academic or research concerns, your teaching experience and skills, your industry experience and current engagements, or your professional networks (academic or industry). Other areas to highlight could be your specific skill sets in areas vital to career advancement such as research grant applications, grant management, research project development, publishing research outputs, your role as a public intellectual, your engagement with traditional and contemporary social media, your engagement with local, national or international governance institutions, etc.
Here is an example of a list of points:
- Time management
- Innovations in teaching and learning
- Research grant writing
- Publishing research results
- Short-form publishing for engaging industry interest
What makes for effective mentoring?
You should ensure you are able to meet the following criteria for effective mentoring:
- Commitment to carve out time for regular (at least twice a semester) meetings with the mentee;
- Capacity to be a patient and selfless listener, and to work across the boundaries of gender/ethnicity/race/age/sexual orientation/culture/religion;
- Capacity to build an environment of trust, and to maintain confidentiality;
- Capacity to collaborate with your mentee in setting realistic, achievable short and long-term career goals and strategies for achieving them;
- Commitment to, where appropriate, assessing the mentee’s range of work obligations and to providing constructive feedback;
- Willingness to collaborate with the mentee in identifying appropriate resources for academic excellence, scholarly work, publishing, professional network-building, publicizing research or policy achievements,
- Support for measuring progress;
- Respect for personal boundaries.
Is mentoring a substitute for teacher training or administrative trouble-shooting?
Not at all. SPS’s Learning and Teaching Nexus is designed to offer support for teaching skills. NYU also offers a wide range of teaching seminars and workshops through the provostial Center for Faculty Advancement (CFA), including its popular “teachtalks” series.
Mentors are not expected to inform mentees of SPS policies, nor to interpret and advise on these policies – School policies evolve and change, and mentors should in all cases advise mentees to seek updates and clarifications from their academic unit’s administrators, or from School-wide bulletins and published policy documents. Mentoring is not a substitute for onboarding, nor is it a substitute for the School’s regular communication of policy changes and schedules, procedures, and deadlines for reappointment and promotion.
Is there a standard/effective mentoring style?
As far as possible, mentoring should be treated as a peer-to-peer exchange, not a hierarchical interaction, with both parties sharing knowledge and suggestions for career development. However, mentors have a responsibility to prioritize the mentee’s goals and to provide technical career advancement advice and collegial support if requested. Mentors should be sensitive and aware of problems such as isolation, exclusion or a disproportionate service burden, and should reflect with the mentee on viable mitigation strategies.
