Synthesis of the Mentoring Workshop*

*For use only by project participants. Not for promotional or other commercial uses.

Assembled by Richard Statler

Introduction

On August 18th, 2003, Pacific Crest facilitated a mentoring workshop held at the University of Idaho in Moscow. This workshop was funded by the ELE project at UI under the NSF. Additional funding came from the Colleges of Engineering at UI. The workshop was organized by Steven Beyerlein and facilitated by Dan Apple, President of Pacific Crest. The purpose of this document is to summarize assessment of the workshop. Note: this document is a draft intended for communication—it is not intended to be a highly polished document.

Faculty members and students from UI and WSU attended this interdisciplinary workshop. The workshop had three primary objectives:

  • Develop awareness, valuing, and skills with mentoring practices such as formal and informal techniques, how to use mentors, how to train mentors.
  • Create awareness of the existing mentoring community and create plans and teams to improve it.
  • Create teams that continue working after the workshop is ended. In particular these teams will grow faculty and student mentoring, enhance classroom practices through the use of mentoring and apply practices of scholarship to research mentoring.

Methods

  • Participants who had attended the workshop filled out an assessment form at the conclusion. The number of assessment forms filled out was 24.
  • Quantitative data from the assessment form was gathered into Excel and averaged.
  • Qualitative data from the assessment form was reviewed and paraphrased.

Results

Quantitative Evaluation: (1-10, 10 being high)

How Valuable was the workshop?8.7

The degree to which your goals/expectations for the workshop were met.8.6

How much did you learn about the teaching/learning process?7

The effectiveness of the facilitator.9.1

The effectiveness of the workshop material.8.1

Level of interest in attending addition workshops.8.9

Quantitative Evaluation:

  • Strengths
  1. Started up within 5 minutes of the schedule tine with the expected people here – personal email on Saturday reminding as expecting to show up on time.
  2. The small group work –gave voice and thinking to the individual areas of interest and time for networking and relating with audiences not often available student – faculty.
  3. Public recording provided focus for learning, summarizing, reviewing, and advancing the learning that was occurring.
  4. Perception checks on focusing on the needs and outcomes of the group and related to the set of participants direct learning outcomes (quickly developed and meaningful).
  5. The language was not an issue for almost all participants – the overview of mentoring doesn’t have specialized.
  6. The foundation for building a rubric and score sheet was effective and aligned to two of the workshop outcomes. Research work that needs a large team is difficult to collect and energize.
  7. Alignment of research, advancing handbook, growing collective knowledge, and building a community were integrated. It was time efficient, productive and produce a more enjoyable environment. It can meet different interests at the same time. Clear outcomes were viewed at the beginning and constant connections were made while the process was going on. Pre-planning and writing measurable outcomes.
  8. Modeling the ownership of the process with the participants. Minimize directive actions – such as summarizing prompting, etc. Use assessment and creative enterprise to add to or modify existing products.
  • Areas for improvements
  1. More techniques on mentoring – concrete inventory of key techniques that would strengthen their mentoring performance – role playing situations, Q&A of difficult situations and effective approaches in those situations, take a current graduate student in the group and actually model a mentoring session.
  2. Strengthen the understanding of the mentoring of mentors role. First setting job description of the mentor, performance criteria for the mentors, and finally setting up the means to advancing the mentoring practice through assessing of the mentor performance.
  3. To make sure that all agendas are addressed – e.g. asking Richard what his outcomes for this workshop would probably would of uncovered this need for helping the mentoring project advance the mentor of mentoring skills for Bob, Mallory, Ken, Steve,
  4. Addressing key issues or hot buttons
  • Insights
  • Research advising is mentoring
  • People have large differences in the amount of feedback they can handle.
  • Mentoring can really change the future of our students.
  • Helped me evaluate and modify some of my current mentoring practices.
  • Despite our varied understanding and context we were able to agree on what quality mentoring looks like.

Participants (24) of the 2003 Mentoring Workshop:

Name / email / University / Department / Phone
Daniel Apple / / Pacific Crest / N/A / 800-421-9826
Donald Elger / / University of Idaho / ME / 885-7889
Dana Stover / / University of Idaho / Business / 885-7343
Ken Noren / / University of Idaho / ECE / 209-0405
Eric Aston / / University of Idaho / Chemical Engineering / 885-6953
Jenni Light / / WashingtonStateUniversity / Civil eng / 509-335-6239
Elizabeth Scherling / / University of Idaho / Biological and Agriculture Engineering / 208-885-7714
Barbara C. Williams / / University of Idaho / Bio and Ag Engineering / 885-9436
Molly Stock / / University of Idaho / Forest Resources / 221-0570
Steve Beyerlein / / University of Idaho / Mechanical Engineering / 885-4932
Richard Statler / / University of Idaho / ME / 208-885-2551
Denny Davis / / WashingtonStateUniversity / Bioengineering / 509-335-7993
Sam Zimmerman / / University of Idaho / Mechanical Engineering / 170-5805
Tris Utschig / / Other / Engineering/Physics - Natural Science / 208-798-7818
Lori Baker-Eveleth / / University of Idaho / Business / (208) 885-5940
Chong Leng Tan / / University of Idaho / Business / 882-6854
Dan Cordon / / University of Idaho / Mechanical Engineering / 208-885-7948
Bob Stephens / / University of Idaho / Mech. Eng. / 205-7898
Linda Morris / / University of Idaho / Business / 885-7159
Herb Hess / / University of Idaho / ECE / 89-1679
Alex Korzyk / / University of Idaho / Business / 885-5958
David Drown / / University of Idaho / Chemical Engineering / 217-2585
Anna Henson / University of Idaho / ME / 885-2551
Mallory / University of Idaho / Women's Center