New faculty have a tremendous amount on their plates navigating a new institution and adjusting to the teaching, research, and service requirements of their new positions. Increasingly, these demands also include requests for mentoring from graduate students who seek them out for their expertise, experiences, or characteristics. While new faculty often have experience teaching and researching, they may have had very limited opportunities to serve as a mentor and, thus, these requests can seem quite daunting.

In order to help new faculty adjust to this new role, the Graduate Mentoring Centers at IUB and IUPUI are collaborating to offer a New Faculty Mentor Training and Discussion series to recent hires from across the IU System. These sessions are also open to any faculty member, regardless of career stage, who wants to be exposed to and interact with others about the evidence based mentoring practices.

Training and discussion modules covered in these dialogues were developed by the National Research Mentoring Network (nrmnet.net) and Center for Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (https://cimerproject.org/). Topics include: Maintaining Effective Communication, Aligning Expectations, Assessing Understanding, Addressing Equity and Inclusion, Fostering Independence, Promoting Professional Development. These dialogues are designed to help faculty and staff strengthen their mentoring of faculty, staff, and students through discussion and sharing of best practices. These sessions are held on the Third Wednesday of every month (beginning in September) from 4-5pm. Registrations to this event are now closed.