USA Faculty Senate Academic Development & Mentoring Committee

Final Report to the Faculty Senate

April 11, 2007

2006-2007 Members

Brenda Beverly (Chair), Allied Health
Ali Engin, Engineering
Sonna Farmer, Arts and Sciences
Mathew Joseph, Business
Zoya Khan, Arts and Sciences
Roger “Tony” Wright, Arts and Sciences

Goal Areas:

For this year, the committee addressed two areas of perceived need: (1) improvements to the New Faculty Orientation program given some expressed concerns from faculty, and (2) development of sustainable mentoring activities to support quality recruitment and retention of faculty at the University of South Alabama.

New Faculty Orientation:

The office of Academic Affairs shared feedback from New Faculty Orientation participants with the committee. The committee reviewed this information, and questions and suggestions were presented to Dr. Covey at a Faculty Senate Executive Council meeting and in writing. She addressed several of these items with the Faculty Senate Executive Council, showing support for one or more of the ideas. Specifically, Dr. Covey indicated that a change in the timing for orientation is not possible. She agreed, however, that some tailoring of the information to meet the varying needs of new USA faculty is desirable. She noted increased need to address topics such as sexual harassment and threat of student violence. Ongoing communication with Academic Affairs regarding revisions to New Faculty Orientation is needed. In particular, committee members continue to recommend culling some information by shifting it to PETAL/OLL while increasing other relevant information, perhaps through department and college-level orientations.

Mentoring:

During the previous academic year, the faculty mentoring program administered by this committee was dismantled in order to emphasize influencing policies and programs for faculty development and mentoring within the university administrative structures. Changes to amend the committee’s name and function were recommended, but a university-wide vote on these changes did not result in a sufficient number of favorable votes to pass the amendment. Thus, no changes to the Senate Handbook have been made with regard to this committee.

Although the majority of the committee members continued to maintain a vision for developing a mentoring structure at USA, more specific actions to adopt this were not identified or acted upon. The following goals are recommended:

1. Continued fact finding regarding mentoring programs at other institutions, including administration, budget, outcomes regarding faculty recruitment and retention, and relevant student outcomes;
2. Identification of concrete components that could be implemented by USA’s administration;
3. Consideration of adoption and implementation by one or two colleges at USA. In particular, the committee suggested that the College of Education and/or the College of Arts and Sciences may be good starting points depending upon administrative and faculty support.