Nora Domínguez, director of the Mentoring Institute at the University of New Mexico, and David Law, professor at Utah State University Uintah Basin, are the editors of the new comprehensive handbook Making Connections: A Handbook for Effective Formal Mentoring Programs in Academia.
This handbook is available electronically and contains podcasts for each of the 28 chapters hosted by the Millennials Mentor Tamara Thorpe. Fifty-one mentoring scholars from the United States and the United Kingdom contributed to writing the book.
The primary goal of this handbook is to help academic mentoring programs move from an ad hoc culture to one of intentionality and effectiveness. The book provides a one-stop shop for those wishing to develop, implement, evaluate, sustain, and fund mentorship at their university. The book is aimed at practitioners, university leaders, and researchers, with a primary focus on novice program coordinators.
The book is divided into four parts. The first part positions the reader to understand the origins and evolution of the mentoring arena in academia. The next part helps practitioners, researchers, and university leadership design, implement, evaluate, and fund effective mentoring programs. Multiple case studies examined undergraduate and graduate students as mentees, and mentoring faculty, and university staff. The last section focuses on future directions of mentoring in academia and has a case study devoted to networked approaches.
"This handbook is a must-read for anyone who wants to design an effective mentoring initiative in academia," said renowned mentoring expert Kathy Kram. "The contributors include scholars and practitioners who have examined the challenges of creating high-quality mentoring experiences in highly complex settings."
Utah Commissioner of Higher Education, David Woolstenhulme, also chimed in on the release of this book saying, "I have witnessed the profound impact of mentoring on the retention and achievement of our valued students, faculty, and staff. I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking to improve retention rates and enhance professional development within their university community."
The book is a collaborative institutional effort by the UNM's Mentoring Institute and USU Empowering Teaching Open Access Book Series.
Authors included several UNM contributors: Nora Dominguez, director of the UNM mentoring institute; Tara Hackel, program manager at the UNM SOM Research Education Office; Rebecca Hartley, assistant dean for Foundational Medical Sciences and professor of cell biology and physiology; Amy Hawkins, administrative officer of the UNM Staff Council; Nancy Lopez, professor of sociology; Orrin Myers, biostatistician and professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine; Valerie Romero-Leggott, vice president for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the UNM Health Sciences Center, Yadeeh Sawyer, program coordinator at the Engineering Student Success Center; Timothy Schroeder, director of the Undergraduate Research, Arts & Design Network; Andrew Sussman, associate professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine; and, Assata Zerai, vice president for Equity and Inclusion and a professor of sociology.
Access the e-book here.