By Tyler White | Staff Writer
In the college environment, mentorship is often thought of in the context of a student learning from a professor, whether that’s through research or academics. However, Baylor’s Office of the Provost offers mentorship among faculty, allowing them to grow together to promote a strengthened foundation for the Baylor community.
Dr. DeAnna Toten Beard, vice provost for faculty affairs, said it’s important for faculty to get connected and to have the opportunity to learn how to improve in their work through mentorship.
“Faculty mentorship is so important because there’s nothing more important for a university than hiring great people and keeping them,” Toten Beard said. “The university is the faculty delivering content to students. If you don’t have faculty and students, you don’t have a university.”
Toten Beard said there are numerous ways for faculty to get connected, such as new faculty orientation, employee resource groups and the Academy for Teaching and Learning. Beyond group connections, she said it’s important for faculty to get involved within their own department and to learn from those who share the same area of work.
“You have to have somebody designated as a willing open book so that new faculty, as they learn their way around Baylor, are confident and comfortable going to somebody,” Toten Beard said.
Mentorship at the university is something that needs to be constantly improved upon, Toten Beard said.
“You don’t one-and-done mentorship,” Toten Beard said. “It’s got to be alive and constantly meeting the needs of who is coming to Baylor now as new faculty and staff, so it’s always addressing what’s next.”
Toten Beard said she hopes students recognize the effort that faculty put into bettering each other and making a positive impact on the Baylor community.
“I’d love for the students to realize that the faculty care about each other too, that there’s a lot of faculty around Baylor who put in service time,” Toten Beard said. “It’s just the goodwill they have for others in taking care of newer faculty, in thinking about what they need and then stepping up to provide it. That culture of caring environment extends to faculty-to-faculty dynamics as well as faculty and students.”
Dr. Stephen Breck Reid, vice provost for faculty diversity and belonging, said mentorship also allows faculty to learn how to interact with students in a positive way.
“The mentoring of faculty-to-faculty has an impact on students because most of us did not have coursework in how to interact with students, and so a lot of the best hands-on training for promoting good, flourishing relationships with students happens in a mentoring context,” Reid said.
Reid said Baylor has a great understanding of how mentorship relates to the mission of the university as a whole.
“One of the things that makes Baylor a great place to work and a great place to teach is we’re, by and large, on the same page about our goal of preparing women and men for worldwide leadership,” Reid said. “To do that, we’ve got to listen to those women and men. We’ve got to understand the culture that that happens in and understand how that has an impact on the way those folks move through life. It takes mentoring to do that job effectively.”
