University of California Summit: Sharing Best Practices for Faculty Climate and Retention
The goals of the Summit are to share programs and policies across UC campuses to improve climate and retention of under-represented faculty by learning from one another’s successes and challenges, and a secondary goal is to continue to develop a network of individuals to facilitate system-wide collaboration.
Faculty Mentoring Honorary Society
Mentoring Circles
Mentoring Circles are a novel model for providing small group mentoring that has been used in university and business organizations in the US and Australia. Refined for women faculty by Professor Emerita Faye Crosby at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Mentoring Circles are structured small group meetings that address the issues that can come up in dyadic mentoring, especially for underrepresented minority (URM) faculty. These are not support groups, which are also helpful though not as structured. However, support is also likely to take place within this safe format.
With funding from a UCOP Affirming Faculty Diversity grant, UCLA has been funning Mentoring Circles for the past three years. The format is a half‐day meeting plus lunch or dinner taking place at the Luskin Conference Center in private rooms with up to 8 participants of common identities and a facilitator usually of the same background as the participants. Mentoring Circles have been run for Gay Chicanos, Junior women faculty in the Arts, Latinas in STEM, and more. For more information, please contact Prof. Chris Dunkel Schetter at dunkel@psych.ucla.edu.
