Congratulations to our Outstanding Faculty Mentors AY 2022-23!
The Office of Faculty Affairs is pleased to recognize mentors of faculty across campus, who demonstrate many of the following qualities and activities of a mentor:
- Support: Encouraging growth and achievement by providing a supportive environment where challenges, successes, and failures can be openly shared and examined.听Exploring mentees鈥� skills and interests to assist them in defining and attaining their goals.听
- Information and Advice: Carving out regular time to share knowledge, experiences, and wisdom to guide mentees in reaching their academic, professional, and/or personal goals.听Making themselves available to provide regular and constructive feedback on mentees鈥� work.听
- Professional Exposure: Involving and/or supporting mentees in professional/leadership opportunities and readily sharing knowledge of other such opportunities with mentees. If the mentor is part of the same department, including mentees in publications, grants, presentations, and/or expositions when appropriate.听Providing valuable access and opportunities by facilitating academic, professional, and personal contacts.听
- Inclusion: Creating access by sharing knowledge of the political landscape and power dynamics in the university and the discipline, if a departmental mentor, and effective strategies for navigating those structures. If the mentee is from an underrepresented, first-generation, or marginalized group, attention is paid to developing skills and support networks for overcoming institutional barriers they may face in the field.听
- Role Modeling: Maintaining high standards for excellence as an engaged university community member. Engaging in respectful relationships with colleagues, earlier-career colleagues, and students. Acknowledging power differentials in professional relationships and behaving with integrity. Encouraging mentees to adopt similar principles of professional behavior.听
Awardees were selected based on a minimum of two letters of recommendation from faculty mentees. Excerpts from their nomination letters are included below. Read more in CU 麻豆官网 Today!
Would you like to nominate your mentor? The nominations for Outstanding Faculty Mentors for AY 2023-24 will open in March 2024.
Anu Sharma
础颁鲍惭别苍迟听惭别苍迟辞谤
Professor and Associate Chair, Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences
鈥淚 was feeling isolated as being the only woman of color faculty member in my department while also trying to care for a very young child during the pandemic. Dr. Sharma gave me great leads on finding childcare. As we continued to meet during our monthly mentoring meetings, my feelings of isolation began to wane as I formed a meaningful connection with a senior faculty member, who was also a mother and woman of color.鈥澨�
听鈥淪he exemplifies so many qualities of what a mentor should be: an advocate, an opportunity broker, a cheerleader, a resource provider, a compassionate leader, and a friend.鈥澨�
Eric Frew
Professor and Associate Chair, Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, College of Engineering and Applied Science
鈥淢y decision to come to CU (and turn down many other attractive offers) came down largely to the wonderful interactions I had with Eric that conveyed a strong commitment to capable and willing mentorship, as well as to a mindset of excellence and inclusion.鈥澨�
鈥淓ric鈥檚 insider knowledge and natural tendency to seek nuanced diversity of perspectives on complex issues makes him an especially good (and trustworthy) source of information for young faculty members who don鈥檛 yet know what they don鈥檛 know.鈥澨�
Mileidis "Millie" Gort
Professor, Equity, Bilinguilism & Biliteracy, School of Education
听鈥淒r. Gort is a masterful mentor who manages to exceed anyone鈥檚 highest听
expectations for guidance.鈥�
听鈥淒r. Gort challenges the competitive neoliberal practices of academia that promote and reward individualism by working collaboratively and in community to support the generations of scholars of color that will come after her.鈥澨�
Christine Macdonald
Associate Teaching Professor, Program for听Writing and Rhetoric, College of Arts and Sciences
听鈥淭hanks to Christy鈥檚 encouragement and constant support, I became a better and more informed teacher, broadened my professional network, and added a publication to my CV.鈥澨�
听鈥淐hristy has done so much for our faculty that listing all of it would make for a very long letter. She has served as a mentor for everyone in our program.鈥澨�
Deepti Misri
Associate Professor, Associate Chair, and听Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Women and Gender Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
听鈥淒eepti has created a community for so many of us junior faculty of color who identify as women, queer, trans, and gender expansive.鈥�
听鈥淒eepti has spent countless hours encouraging, caring for, and ultimately building up so many of us junior faculty. This kind of mentorship is rare and has no name.听I continue to sit in gratitude for the spaces she has helped to cultivate for us鈥攕paces of belonging, being seen, being valued.鈥�
Mithi Mukherjee
Associate Professor, Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences
听鈥淧rof. Mukherjee dedicated countless hours of her time to academically but also personally mentoring me to reach standards of excellence.鈥澨�
听鈥淧rofessor Mukherjee has contributed in several meaningful ways towards community building and support for junior faculty. I experienced this personally at a meeting of Faculty of Color.听She offered to serve as a mentor to me and also to convene meetings of other South Asians on campus.鈥澨�