Skip to main content
Building Your Network: Week 2
Blog

Building Your Network: Week 2

July 15, 2025 Rebeca Pope-Ruark and Maria Gallardo-Williams 7-min. read

The podcast music, I Talk to the Wind, produced by Yung Pinoy, as part of the NC State University Libraries State of Sound collection.

Additional Resources

Mentoring

by Rebeca Pope-Ruark and Maria Gallardo-Williams

Welcome to the second week of our Building Your Network journey; this week we are focusing on mentoring, specifically faculty mentoring other faculty. Last week, you thought about the goal or role you want to achieve and who you need in your corner to reach that next step. This week, we consider what makes a good faculty mentor, how to select and reach out to potential mentors (you need more than one!), and we will talk about different kinds of mentoring relationships. You’ll find two podcast episodes for this week: in the first episode, Maria talks to Dr. Melissa Srougi, an associate teaching professor at NC State University, who shares about the crucial role mentorship played in her professional development. Next, Rebecca chats with Assistant Dean for Mentoring Dr. Jennifer Leavey from Georgia Tech’s College of Sciences, about how departments and colleges can create conditions and opportunities for good faculty-to faculty mentoring.

Why Focus on Mentoring in Your Network?

As we discussed in the introductory post for our SPARK topic, all faculty can benefit from having a support network in and around higher education; mentors are part of that constellation which might also include coaches (week 3) and sponsors (week 4). As faculty, we’ve likely already had a series of mentors, perhaps a professor who took you under their wing during your undergraduate career or your PI in grad school or a postdoc. As a junior faculty member, you may have been assigned a mentor from your department or college as part of a new faculty orientation program. But after that, why should you continue to seek out mentors to build your network, even if you are mid- or late-career? 

Hundreds of studies point to the benefits of mentoring at all career stages; the University of Illinois summarizes some of the benefits: “Mentoring can produce more effective research, teaching, and university service; higher rates of retention; stronger commitment to an academic career; a greater sense of ownership and connection to the discipline and institution; deeper collaborations and more extensive networks; better work-life balance; and enhanced use of resources and opportunities available within the institution and the discipline.” Chances are you would like to experience at least a few of these benefits, regardless of your career stage. And studies also suggest that most people need more than one mentor – rather than one “guru” mentor who does it all, think about people who might be good in different areas of your work-life, a researcher you admire, an excellent teacher you can learn from, or someone who seems to have work-life balance figured out might all make the list.

Who Makes a Good Mentor?

In the first podcast episode, Dr. Srougi shares about her experiences with a variety of mentors along her professional journey from a pre-med student to her current teaching-centric role at NC State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and she shared her list of what makes a good faculty mentor.

Good mentors:

  • Listen actively. Srougi says the best mentors listened. “They listened to where I was at that point in time and were able to help me articulate what I was saying.”
  • Provide freedom and creativity. Having mentors who allowed her the “freedom and having that creativity and the opportunity to do things” was “really helpful,” particularly in the early stages of her career.
  • Facilitate reflection. Good mentors served as a “sounding board” and provided “reflection” on experiences, helping her understand what she learned and where she wanted to go next. Srougi highlights the importance of this “metacognitive aspect.”
  • Support exploration and allow for failure. She says mentors who “let me shadow them, let me ask lots of questions, let me fail and not be in trouble for failing” were crucial for her professional growth, especially when transitioning to a new field. They provided “reassurance that failure was good in this context.”
  • Provide frank and constructive feedback. Peer mentors at a small liberal arts college provided “really frank feedback” that helped her prioritize and manage her workload as a new assistant professor. They helped her identify opportunities to “synergize activities.”
  • Connect on skills and interests. Srougi’s department chair at NC State facilitated a formal mentoring program that matched her with a mentor who had traveled a similar path, providing ongoing support for her “mid-level stage” challenges.

Ready to brainstorm names for your mentor network? Check out NC State’s Do I Need a Mentor? worksheet for some reflection questions to explore.

What Else Should You Know?

In the second podcast episode this week, I talked to Jennifer Leavey at Georgia Tech.  Jennifer has a unique role in her college as the assistant dean for mentoring. We talked about her personal trajectory and how her role has developed her thinking about mentoring as well. When I asked about her role, she told me it was initially designed to support mid-career faculty who might already be good at teaching, research, and service. “But then how do you keep from getting stale? How do you grow and develop? How can you change directions if you want?”: her role developed from there. Jennifer described the variety of programs she runs for the college and notes that it’s important to have various mentoring opportunities for faculty because they all might need or prefer different styles. One-on-one might work for one person, but another might appreciate a group context where they aren’t the center of focus all the time. She comments, “If I were gonna start a brand new mentoring program, I would consider asynchronous online formats. I would consider in-person one-on-one or online, one-on-one synchronous mentoring.  I would consider group mentoring with people at different ages and stages or peer mentoring, just having the whole variety.

When asked what advice she would give to mentors interested in working with colleagues in higher ed, she recommends “having regular contact. Reaching out either by email or in person is really important for developing a relationship. I also have a pretty bad memory, so keeping a notebook for yourself to remind yourself what you want to  ask somebody about the next time you’re with them.”

On the flip side, she shares the following advice for mentees: “preparing questions in advance – that’s super important. You don’t want it to be unidirectional. You want to set the agenda for your own experience and maybe even sharing those questions ahead of time so that [the mentor] has an opportunity to think about it before they come in.”

Different Kinds of Mentoring

As we’ve explored, the subject of  mentorship is rich and varied, offering a multitude of pathways to professional growth and personal fulfillment. For academics, the fact that there are many options  is not merely a convenience, but an opportunity to tailor mentorship experiences to individual needs and aspirations.

Consider the enduring strength of the One-on-One mentorship, a traditional model where a less experienced mentee gains invaluable insights from a seasoned mentor. This dedicated pairing, built on mutual respect and shared responsibility, can provide a bedrock of support, offering personalized guidance and a safe space for facing academic challenges and career transitions. Distance mentorship options extend this vital connection beyond geographical boundaries, allowing you to connect with experts across institutions or within different branches of your organization. Imagine the possibilities of learning from a luminary in your field, regardless of their location, fostering truly global academic collaborations.

But mentorship isn’t always about a single dyadic relationship. The Extended Network model invites you to broaden your horizons, simultaneously engaging with various mentoring options. This approach allows you to draw from a diverse pool of perspectives, enriching your understanding of teaching pedagogies, leadership styles, and research methodologies. It’s about strategically cultivating a web of support that propels your development in multiple directions, truly advancing your expertise. For those who thrive in collective environments, Group Mentorship offers a space for shared learning and mutual encouragement. Here, a single mentor guides multiple mentees, fostering vibrant discussions, collective accountability, and a powerful sense of community among peers navigating similar academic landscapes.

Finally, the spirit of collaboration truly shines in the Peer Mentorship model, where two or more faculty members, often with complementary expertise, partner to achieve shared goals. This peer-to-peer approach is a testament to the power of pooling knowledge, where each participant showcases their finest skills, offering support, advice, and counsel to one another. It’s an empowering model that recognizes the immense value of reciprocal learning and shared intellectual endeavors.

No matter which model resonates most with your journey, embracing mentorship in its many forms is a powerful investment in your future. These options are not just mechanisms for skill development; they are catalysts for fostering a vibrant, supportive, and intellectually stimulating academic community.

We hope this content was useful to you, and please know that we want to support you. You can leave us a comment (if you have an NC State ID), or we will be following this conversation on Bluesky, X and LinkedIn at #SparkBYN and you can join us there. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Resources

Leave a Response

Your email address will not be published. All fields are required.

More From Office for Faculty Excellence

Postcards from Our OFE Summer 

Building Your Network: Week 4 

Building Your Network: Week 3