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| Dr. Sascha Longstreth (right) with Dr. Idara Essien, assistant professor of child and family development. |
By José A. Álvarez
Her goal is very clear: making sure junior and new faculty at the College of Education are successful in academia and achieve tenure.
As the director of COE’s Faculty Mentor Program, Dr. Sascha Longstreth’s primary objective is to make sure all junior and new faculty members feel supported in their pursuit of a fulfilling and successful academic career at San Diego State University.
“We achieve this in several ways. First and foremost, we help to establish mentoring relationships between junior and tenured faculty,” said Longstreth, who is in her second year as director of the program. “All junior and new faculty members are paired with a mentor with whom they meet on a regular basis. These mentoring relationships are essential to ensuring that our junior faculty receive individualized guidance and support as they navigate the demands of tenure.”
Longstreth added that the Faculty Mentor Program also offers ongoing support to junior and new faculty through the Brown Bag Mentoring Workshop Series. The workshops, facilitated by faculty experts, focus on teaching faculty skills and strategies that can help them to thrive in academia.
Some of the topics covered include:
- Strategic semester planning
- Grant-writing
- Managing professional relationships
“The newsletter provides mentoring ideas, on-campus resources and opportunities for additional support and training,” Longstreth said, adding that COE’s dean, Dr. Y. Barry Chung, created a mentoring grant for the program to encourage and support the development of COE assistant and associate professors as research-active scholars.
“Faculty mentees and mentors apply as a pair to receive funds for professional development and/or expenses for pilot research that could result in external funding for future research,” she said.
According to Longstreth, one of the ways that mentors can establish a positive relationship with their mentees is to identify early on those areas where the mentee needs more support.
“I encourage mentors to connect their mentees with campus resources, professional resources, and/or other mentors in the field that can support their professional growth,” Longstreth said. “The ultimate goal is to help our faculty establish a network of mentors who can support them in a variety of ways throughout their career.”
