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Though mentoring is associated with faculty productivity, career success, and satisfaction, barriers to effective mentoring such as time and resources persist. At UNC-Chapel Hill, mentoring climate surveys revealed uneven access to mentoring, with majority of faculty securing mentors on their own. Targeting Equity in Access to Mentoring (TEAM) ADVANCE (NSF Award#1760187) launched a facilitated peer mentoring circles program in fall 2019 to provide support for early career faculty in itsmultilevel intervention. TEAM ADVANCE Peer Mentoring Circles provide a semi-structured, facilitated peer mentoring model. Open to all early career faculty, each circle supports up to 6 mentees, facilitated by 2 senior faculty. A goals/values survey enabled formation of groups that include tenure-track and fixed-term faculty from a variety of disciplines. Circles meet monthly. Facilitators debrief between circles meetings. A concurrent professional development workshop series provides resources and topics for circle discussions. Circles also address individual and shared goals. A total of 168 faculty participated in the program over 3 academic years. Qualitative analysis of focus group data and open-ended responses on mentoring climate surveys from program participants revealed themes of safe spaces for conversations, access to senior faculty, access to career development resources, and networking with peers/similar social identities. Mentoring Climate Survey data from all faculty respondents indicated an increase in satisfaction with peer mentoring from fall 2019 to spring 2020, statistically significant for women (p < 0.05). The TEAM ADVANCE Peer Mentoring Circles program shows promise and scalability in supporting early career faculty across a wide range of social identities. Senior mentor-facilitators were appreciated. The semi-structured approach with access to workshops/content on professional development topics (e.g., negotiation, promotion/tenure, annual reviews) provides a base for Circles conversations to unfold to directly support peer mentees. The has been delivered in-person and virtually. Administrative support is the primary cost.
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This content will become publicly available on January 30, 2026
Learning From Each Other: Faculty Peer Mentoring Circles at ADVANCE Institutions
Peer mentoring circles for women faculty are beneficial to the personal and professional development of the participants and can increase the retention of women in academia. Here, we discuss the history and evolution of faculty peer mentoring circles as part of ADVANCE at Ohio State University, Murray State University, and South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. The three institutions used the same framework, and adapted their peer-mentoring programs for their local circumstances. We describe a brief history of faculty peer mentoring programs and how each institution monitored outcomes. We summarize their successes and challenges based on participant feedback, surveys, and attendance. We share lessons learned across the three institutions, including the need to pay attention to power dynamics, how to structure cohorts, topics for discussion, and the role of facilitators. This article contributes to the peer mentoring literature by sharing the perspectives of three institutions that used the same general model but differed in details of local adaptation.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1935939
- PAR ID:
- 10593412
- Publisher / Repository:
- OREGON STATE ADVANCE
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The advance journal
- ISSN:
- 2643-7031
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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