The CHASS Mentoring Program tries to help junior faculty members build long and productive careers at UCR by pairing them with senior faculty members. Senior faculty mentors provide informal advice intended to help junior faculty member acclimate to the university, understand aspects of teaching, research and service and ease the tenure process.
Members of each pair are expected to commit to regular contact and to provide helpful but unofficial guidance in different areas of importance for the junior faculty member. Program participants will also meet periodically as group for guidance and informal gatherings.
There are two ways of becoming part of the CHASS Mentoring Program:
(1) Many departments have mentoring programs in place. If your department has such a program and you wish to take part in it, please do so. Should you find a mentor or a mentee in this way, please also send the following information about both partners to Susan Beals at susan.beals@ucr.edu.
Names
Ranks
Department
Years at UCR (for mentor and mentee)
Email Addresses
Work Phones(2) If no such program exists in your department or if there are no available partners in your department or if you would prefer either a mentee or a mentor from outside your home department, please e-mail Georgia Warnke at georgia.warnke@ucr.edu
Please include the following information:Name
Rank
Department
Years at UCR
Email Address
Work Phone
Research interests and teaching duties (e.g. lectures, seminars, laboratory teaching, graduate advising)
Preferred department and other characteristics (e.g. gender) of your mentor or mentee
Merits and Promotions
How does the UC system of merits, appraisals and promotions work? How are merits, appraisals and promotions handled within the department? Does the department appoint a sub-committee to evaluate individual files? If so, how does this committee’s recommendation relate to the faculty vote on the file? Who is eligible to vote on a junior faculty merit, appraisal or promotion file?
When and how often does one come up for review? What are the elements of a strong file with regard to research or creative activity, teaching and service? Ought one prepare a self-statement? What are the possible outcomes of merit, appraisal and promotion reviews?
What is the fifth-year appraisal? How does it differ from the tenure review?
How does the tenure process work? What does one submit for review? When? How are reviewers selected? Does the candidate have a role in that process? How does one assemble a list of potential outside reviewers (the candidate’s list)? What kind of reviewers should one try for? Is it important to have reviewers from other University of California campuses? Are international, domestic and University of California reviewers regarded equally? How are the reviewer's own qualifications evaluated? What sorts of relations with potential reviewers make them inappropriate for one’s list? How and when does one hear the results?
Campus and Department
How is the junior faculty member's department organized? (Divisions, Committees?)
How are decisions made in the department, college and campus?
What the opportunities are there for junior faculty service in CHASS, on campus and in the UC system?
Research
What research resources are available for faculty members through the administration or Academic Senate? How may one use a Discovery course to increase one’s research fund? For what can Academic Senate research funds be used? For what can other research funds be used?
Where should one publish? What should one publish? How much and how often? What are the expectations in the department, college and university expectations with regard to publication before tenure? How do journal articles compare to book chapters in edited collections? How are electronic journals and submissions viewed?
How important are grants? How does one get hooked into the grant-writing process? How much effort should one invest in capturing research funding? How does one find people to help in writing the best possible proposal and configuring a budget?What are departmental expectations with regard to buying out courses with external grant funding? What is the expected percent of indirect cost funding on grants one receives? Are there funding agencies to which one should not apply because the indirect cost recovery is of inadequate? What is the expectation of the amount of indirect funds recovery per square foot of laboratory space you occupy? How does the department assess shared cost for use of common equipment and its service contracts?
On collaborative efforts, how are the authors listed? Where do graduate student names go? How important is first authorship? How is an alphabetical listing of authors viewed?
Presentations of Research
What conferences should the junior faculty attend? How much travel is allowed, expected and supported? How does one choose between large conferences and smaller events? What can one do at professional gatherings to gain exposure and contacts?
Should one give presentations about one’s work or creative activity at other universities conferences and other public settings? How often? How important are presentations? How does one get invited to give presentations?
Should one try to give presentations within one’s department? How often? How are colloquia in the department organized? What opportunities are there for one’s graduate students to present their work?
Collaborative Research
Do the university and/or department encourage or discourage collaborative work? What about collaborative research with other members of the department? With international colleagues? With colleagues who are more senior? With other junior faculty? With graduate students? How doe the university and/or department view long-standing collaborations? How important is it to have some (or all) single-author papers to one’s credit or papers with multiple authors in which one is the first or senior author?
Ought one form a research group? What sort of activities should the group do, as opposed to work one should undertake individually?
Teaching
How is teaching success reviewed? What is the role of student evaluations in merit and promotion files? Is one required to use the university student evaluation of teaching form? If senior faculty observe one’s classes, who asks them to come? To whom do they report, and in what way? What resources are there for improving one’s teaching?
What can one be expected to teach? Are some types of teaching more valued that others? How much flexibility is there in teaching schedules? Who controls the schedule?
Is it better to teach the same courses quarter after quarter, stay within a single area or teach a variety of different courses? How should one respond to requests to teach a course for a different department or program or for such programs such as CHASS-Connect?
How much time should one spend on preparing courses? Where is the line between sufficient preparation and over-preparation?
If one has teaching assistants, who selects them? What can one expect of them and what responsibilities does the faculty member have in evaluating their performance?
Are there departmental or university standards with regard to grading? Does the department expect midterm and final exams?
If a classroom problem arises that one isn’t sure how to handle, what are resources are available to help?
What documentation related to teaching should one keep, if any? Syllabi? Exams? Abstracts?
Student Supervision
How important is work with undergraduate students in labs and performances? How much should one try to involve undergraduates in one’s research? How important is working with undergraduates on senior theses and the like?
How important is working with graduate students? How many M.A.’s M.F.A.’s and Ph.D.’s should one expect or try to supervise? How many is too many? How aggressive should one be in recruiting students? How much advising should one expect to do? What sorts of files should one keep on one’s students? How does one set limits on the amount of time and effort is invested in them?
What should one expect from one’s graduate students? How does one identify a problem graduate student?
What about hiring postdoctoral associates? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
How are the pay scales, TA-ships and fellowships set for the graduate students? Should write training grants?
Service
How much committee work should one expect to perform within one’s department? Within CHASS? On campus? Which Senate committees should one try to serve on, if any? Is there any service one should avoid pre-tenure? How much time should one expect to devote to committees and other forms of service as a junior faculty member?
How important is professional service outside of the university? How much paper and proposal reviewing is reasonable? Should one serve on review and journal boards?
How should one weigh the prestige of organizing a national event in one’s field in relation to the time commitment it involves?
Personal Issues
What are UCR’s policies with regard to family leaves? How does one arrange for such leaves? How does the stop-the-clock process work? How many may one request?
What sorts of personal leaves are possible? Leaves without pay? Medical leaves?
What programs does the university provide for childcare?
How visible must one be in the department? Is it expected that one come to campus every day? Is it acceptable to work at home?
What are the university's sexual harassment policies?
If one is involved in a controversy or dispute, where does one go for help?
How does one deal with intradepartmental conflict, should it arise?
How does one resolve problems one may have with departmental or college staff?