Faculty & Staff

By Andrew Davidson, executive vice dean, and Sarah Jubinski, project manager

Last fall the School introduced its first school-wide junior faculty mentoring program. Formal mentoring brings a number of benefits. These include: guidance in career goals and sustained coaching in achieving them, access to honest criticism and feedback, expanded networks and opportunities for collaboration, advice on responsibilities and priorities, insight into the formal and informal “rules of the road” of academia, and help in developing skills needed to succeed.  Formal mentoring programs have been shown to be especially valuable for increasing the career success of faculty members from traditionally underrepresented groups. 

At the conclusion of our first year, we are excited to reflect on our progress.

Last year all 69 junior faculty were assigned senior faculty mentors.  Mentors and mentees were invited to introductory sessions covering program guidelines, attributes of positive and negative mentoring, and guidance on the management of the mentoring relationship.  The Office of Academic Affairs also created a website with a variety of tools to support mentoring, including a contract describing the responsibilities of mentors and mentees, best practices for mentorship, and links to external resources.  To learn more please visit the mentoring website.

Thank you to all mentors and mentees who participated last year!  Now that we have the program up and running, the focus of the upcoming year will be to solidify and sustain mentorship and evaluate our efforts so far.  We will be sending evaluations to both mentors and mentees.  Please be on the lookout for invitations to participate in surveys and focus groups to share your experiences with the program and your suggestions for improvements.  In addition, over the next month mentees will have an opportunity to meet with their chairs about whether they would like to switch mentors.

This fall the School welcomes eight new junior faculty mentees, bringing the number of mentoring pairs in the Program to 77. 

The School views the mentoring effort as part of a broader effort to provide faculty an environment of support and inclusion.  Mentoring is one of a number of initiatives intended to support faculty.  Others include the Research Resources Initiative, and an enhanced new faculty on-boarding and orientation program that was introduced last year and has been strengthened for our new class of faculty.  That orientation process includes an introductory binder for all new faculty, one-on-one meetings with Dean Fried and with Executive Vice Dean Davidson, a new faculty reception and a special introduction for the new faculty to the Deans and Directors of the School.

We would also like to take note of our participation in the first large scale, multi-site trial of mentor training focused on clinical and translational research. Melissa Begg, Professor of Clinical Biostatistics and Associate Dean of Interdisciplinary Programs will be the site PI. For more information about the study, contact Melissa at md3@columbia.edu.

In addition to Mailman-specific resources, the Medical Center offers a series of monthly workshops for junior faculty members to build their skills, get support for their career development efforts, and find a community of individuals in a similar career stage. 

The goal of the CUMC workshop series is to help junior faculty members to develop a better understanding of career planning and the expectations for a Columbia University faculty member. Last year many of the presenters were public health faculty and administrators, and many of our faculty attended.

Fall 2010 workshops will commence this month.  For details and schedule information for 2010, please contact Clara Lapiner by sending an e-mail to cl2779@columbia.edu or by calling 212-304-5637.

This year’s program will include the following topics:

• Session 1: Orienting Your Career at CUMC
• Session 2: Academic Tracks and Academic Advancement at CUMC
• Session 3: Developing a Career Focus
• Session 4: Mentoring
• Session 5: Documents for Doc’s: CV’s and Insight On What You Need to Tell Your Story
• Session 6: Time Management and Balancing Work/Life
• Session 7: Negotiation
• Session 8: Money Matters
• Session 9: Leadership

Full detail on last year’s program is available on the website for the CUMC Office of Faculty Professional Development.