Search for: All records

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.