Three Approaches to Recognizing Faculty Mentors

Faculty are essential to achieving the mission and goals of higher education. Their contributions often extend beyond research, teaching, and service to areas such as mentoring, and the mentors deserve consistent recognition. But department chairs face competing demands to grow and maintain student enrollment, balance budgets, seek new sources of funding, and evaluate the viability of academic programs and their outcomes, which bumps faculty development and mentoring toward the bottom of their priorities. These competing priorities may affect the availability of faculty development funds and time allotted for recognition from year to year, preventing the chair from making faculty appreciation of mentoring a top priority. Thus, faculty achievements too frequently go uncelebrated.