coeNEWS University of Georgia
College of Education
Office of Communications & Publications
G9 Aderhold Hall
Athens, GA 30602
706/542-5889 coenews@uga.edu
The Project Promote Web site was designed by Lloyd Rieber, an instructional technology professor (L) and doctoral student Greg Clinton. Rieber conceived the idea with the university's 2004-05 Senior Teaching Fellows.
Project Promote: Helping Early Career Faculty
An innovative Web portal for new UGA faculty that combines teaching, research and other academic resources with online mentoring by senior faculty is among the first such sites in the nation.
An innovative new University of Georgia Web site offers an online mentoring program to early career faculty and resources in research, teaching and other academic interests.
Nationally, there is nothing quite like Project Promote, according to its designers, College of Education professor Lloyd Rieber and Greg Clinton, a doctoral student in instructional technology and a staff member in the Center for Teaching and Learning.
“There are a lot of resources online for UGA faculty related to research and teaching but up until now they have not been consolidated online in a portal just for faculty. This site puts all these resources together in one place and does so especially with early career faculty in mind,” said Clinton.
UGA provides a wide array of resources to ensure the success of its students and Project Promote will put UGA at the forefront as having one of the most innovative faculty mentoring programs in the nation. The need and initial design for an online faculty resource of this type was conceived in collaboration between Rieber and the Senior Teaching Fellows of 2004-05.
Currently, more than 15 senior faculty members serve as mentors on the site. However, this number is anticipated to increase substantially now that the site has completed its pilot testing and is accessible to all new UGA faculty.
“This site does not replace having a mentor within one’s department, but we hope this will enhance and extend the process,” said Rieber, a professor of instructional technology and principal investigator of Project Promote.
In the best of circumstances, mentorship programs work well and you need nothing else, but unfortunately it doesn’t always work out that way. Mentoring is not something that can be forced, said Rieber.
The hope is that this Web site will act as a valuable resource, enriching the mentoring process, particularly in situations when new faculty don’t feel comfortable going to their mentors or department heads with certain questions.
There are a lot of power issues in academia, especially within one’s home department. Early career faculty face votes from their senior colleagues on promotion and tenure decisions. As a result, they may be reluctant to ask sensitive questions. This Web portal allows new faculty to ask these questions and explore other points of view outside of their home department and immediate mentor, Rieber said.
At the heart of the mentoring site is a resource called the Question & Answer Center.
“An early career faculty member can log into the site and type in a question. Senior faculty are then alerted that a question has been submitted,” said Clinton.
In addition, early career faculty can choose to maintain different levels of confidentiality when they ask a question by deciding how much of their identity to disclose (e.g. name, college, academic area). The hope is to make early career faculty comfortable asking even the most sensitive of questions to be answered, potentially, by a variety of senior faculty at UGA.
“The identity of senior faculty is never hidden, so you always know who is answering the question. And, since most questions likely do not have one correct answer, this allows multiple points of view to be expressed,” Rieber said. All faculty on campus can then view all questions and answers. The Web site is updated automatically as questions are posed and answers are provided.
It is expected that one question will lead to more questions from other early career faculty. As new questions are asked each begins a new Q&A thread on the Web site. Faculty members also get email notification when there is a response to their question.
As of now, senior faculty must also be a member of the UGA teaching academy in order to serve as a mentor on Project Promote. Currently, more than 15 senior faculty members serve as mentors on the site. However, this number is anticipated to increase substantially now that the site has completed its pilot testing and is accessible to all new UGA faculty.
“I think the old adage is true that if one person has the courage to ask a question many others probably have the same question,” Rieber said. “New faculty members have the most to gain or lose by either not asking critical questions or not getting their questions answered. Our goal is to help them succeed.”
Rieber and Clinton hope department heads from across campus will help support the launching and use of the Web portal.
“It is the responsibility of department heads to make sure each new faculty is getting mentored,” said Rieber, a former department head himself. “We hope that the Project Promote Web portal will make their jobs a little easier.”
Rieber and Clinton believe Project Promote will enhance that mentoring process and foresee its expansion to other groups that need mentoring as well such as part-time faculty and eventually to the entire University System of Georgia.
coeUPDATES
