Mentoring+proposal+from+Lois+Rudnick

Proposal: To appoint, by application and review (through the CIT board?) a senior mentor who would get one CLR for a two year stint in which s/he would provide mentorship of 4 to 5 junior faculty from across the college/university. Since scholarship is the most difficult category, I would think this person should be able to demonstrate interest and talent in helping junior faculty to establish a scholarly agenda, read and advise drafts of their writing for publication, help them figure out where and how to publish their work, and, most especially in CLA, work with them on writing book proposals, though I realize some disciplines (sciences) don't expect or even want books (science "books" I've been told are textbooks and not worth much as "scholarship"). I honestly don't know how much labor intensive mentoring/writing work is fair to ask for. I do think that the position could ask for "general" mentoring in terms of balancing scholarship with other factors, though department mentors should be helping out with teaching and service profiles and CIT does work on this in the junior seminars. I do think it would be fair to ask the mentor to work with junior faculty on their 4th year review and tenure statements. It would be BEST for each college to appoint such a person. I think two years is important so that there is some continuity. I think some reward is necessary if you want senior faculty to apply for th is. It is a GREAT way to account for the time and talent of seniors like myself who love doing this and are good at it. I've worked with two faculty IN DEPTH who got book proposals form a first rank publisher; I've read book prospectuses from two othrs; will be reading two more this semester; have given feedback on drafts of work written by faculty OUTSIDE my department, although I can't see why the senior mentor can't have ONE mentee from his/her own department. This is the best I can come up with. I hope you can do something with it. This is a VERY LOW COST/HIGH REWARD idea. I realize that there aren't necessarily A LOT of senior faculty who can do this, so the position should't be filled unless there are good applicants; even one is enough.