Cori Wilhelm: Okay, there we go. We're recording.
Cori Wilhelm: Hello, everybody, and thanks for joining us for the next spotlight on city libraries. Today we're going to talk about mentoring.
Cori Wilhelm: specifically mentoring on shoe string, as you can see, and Allen Barr is going to prevent present from Alfred University libraries. And Ellen, if you want to introduce yourself and tell us your position, title
Cori Wilhelm: as we get started.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Sure. So I am at the University. I'm the Systems Librarian.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So that's my role, and i'll say a little bit about Alfred in a few minutes. I don't know what else I could tell you about myself. I've been here since about
Ellen Bahr (she/her): 2,006. So a little while.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and
Ellen Bahr (she/her): moved here from New York City. So that was a big, a big change of pace for me. But I I do like it here in Alfred.
Cori Wilhelm: Yes, I've been to Alfred, and it is very different from New York City, and so for participants. The meeting is being recorded, and we will share the recording out afterward.
Cori Wilhelm: And if you do have questions, you can throw them in the chat, and we'll have time to address them after.
Cori Wilhelm: but you can go ahead and get started on.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Okay. Well, thanks, Corey, and thanks for inviting me to share my thoughts about mentoring today.
So this talk is
Ellen Bahr (she/her): in some ways an update to a poster presentation that I gave
Ellen Bahr (she/her): at the Sunni Law Conference over the summer. So at that time we were just kind of at the beginning stages of investigating how we might expand mentoring opportunities here at Alfred.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So this presentation will include some
Ellen Bahr (she/her): some updates and additional information about what we're doing here.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So I called the presentation mentoring on a shoe string, because this was a really important concern in our library here, and I imagine it is for some of you as well. We don't have a lot of money or time to dedicate to, You know a mentoring program.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So doing something without a lot of administrative overhead was really important to us.
So i'm going to cover a couple of things today. I'm going to start with sharing some basic information about mentoring some background on mentoring models and approaches
some current themes and mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And then i'll turn to talking about
Ellen Bahr (she/her): some of the steps we've taken here at Alfred University to think about. What are our goals for mentoring? And how would we develop activities to support those goals, and i'll talk a little bit about the process. We followed here as well.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): so i'm expecting to talk for maybe about 30 min.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): after which time. I hope we'll have time, you know, to have a conversation here from some of you about your experiences.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): maybe. Think about brainstorm a little bit together about how we might work together more across.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Okay, so just a little bit about Alfred for anyone who isn't familiar with us, we're a private, not for Profit University in Western New York.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): We're about Well, we're sort of directly south of Rochester, near the Pennsylvania border, and we host the New York State College of ceramics, which is a sunny statutory college. So that's really our connection to Simon.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): We have about 1,500 undergrads and about 400 graduate students.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and we're fortunate to have 2 libraries. It's unusual for an institution of our size. So Eric Memorial Library, which is where I'm located, and then the Samuel, our Schools Library of Ceramics, which serves the New York State College of Ceramics.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So it might be good just to kind of start with some kind of definition of mentoring. So I like this definition from Ginger Williams, because it's pretty simple and succinct.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): She says that mentoring is a developmental relationship between 2 or more. People
Ellen Bahr (she/her): so notice that mentoring is described as a relationship. This is what makes mentoring somewhat unique, and also sometimes, I think, a little bit difficult to get our arms around.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So when we talk about mentoring, it can mean different things to different people. The experience of giving, mentoring, or receiving mentoring can be kind of intangible and multi layered.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): It's typically a relationship that develops over time, and that where there's given, take it's mutually beneficial. It isn't just transactional kind of relationship.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and it has both career and psychosocial dimensions. So there's an aspect of emotional support that's part of a mentoring relationship.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): More recently there's been some criticism of the traditionally hierarchical nature of mentoring, so that power dynamic between Mentor and Mentee.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and in some cases a desire to expand. How we define mentoring especially tensions that can come into play between the role of mentoring and assimilation versus empowerment of mentees.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So
Ellen Bahr (she/her): we usually
Ellen Bahr (she/her): think about the benefits of mentoring to the Mentee. That's we think of the Mentee as sort of the primary beneficiary.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And for the mentee there are benefits. It can reduce. Isolation, can help librarians to feel supported.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): filling gaps in their knowledge. Provide opportunities for self-development and reflection
Ellen Bahr (she/her): but other groups can benefit from entering as well. So, for example, the Mentor.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know. It might give them a renewed sense of professional purpose.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): It helps to expose experience. Librarians to emerging aspects of the profession create a sense of satisfaction for having helped a less experienced colleague. And then there are also benefits for the library, or maybe for you know, the wider organization
Ellen Bahr (she/her): creating a more attractive work, environment.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): improving morale, and supporting recruitment and retention.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And then, of course, there are benefits for the profession. If it supports the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next, and helps to prepare some of our future leaders.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): There are a wide variety of mentoring models out there. I'll just briefly describe a few of them.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So one on one mentoring. This is probably the model that's most familiar to all of us, where a more experienced mentor guides the less experienced mentee
in peer mentoring
Ellen Bahr (she/her): individuals at a similar career level help each other. So you know.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): there's been increased interest in peer mentoring in recent years. I think it's partly because it's a little bit easier to implement.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and also because if there's a shortage of senior librarians, it's an approach that that can still work.
Community of practice is similar to peer mentoring, but it would include librarians with a wider range of experience.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So in a community of practice the participants are focused on providing each other with support, you know, in whatever way they want to define it. It could be working on research and scholarship, or whatever focus they want to take
in group mentoring
Ellen Bahr (she/her): a mentor or a small group of Mentors works with a group of mentees. So this is another model that can work. If you have a shortage of senior librarians, because one of them, or say 2 of them could work with the tenure track librarians as a group
Ellen Bahr (she/her): mentoring networks involve
Ellen Bahr (she/her): having a ment mentee having multiple relationships that can serve different purposes.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So the more I've learned about mentoring networks, the more interested I become in this approach, and i'll say a little bit more about that later in the presentation.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And then finally, there's reverse mentoring, which we hear about less. I think we're an individual with less experience would share their knowledge and skills with the more experienced colleague. So those are just some models that are out there.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So I think there's you know, kind of a growing awareness that no single model will create the perfect program. Models really need to be considered in the context of your local needs and constraints, and it's also possible to kind of mix and match. These approaches. You don't necessarily have to go with just one of them.
So another way to categorize mentoring is is as either formal or informal.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and i'm going to spend a little bit of time on this, because
this distinction, I think, is sort of important.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So formal mentoring is usually done through a structured program
Ellen Bahr (she/her): where a more experienced mentor is paired with a less experienced mentee.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and it's usually for a defined period of time. You know, that can vary. It can be a year. It can be multiple years
Ellen Bahr (she/her): an informal mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): The Mentor and the Mentee come together more organically. So, you know, one might reach out to the other to offer mentoring or to request mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And you know, it might even be a
Ellen Bahr (she/her): a professional relationship that people have developed that eventually evolves into more of a mentoring kind of
relationship.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So these relationships really last for just as long as the 2 people involved in them find them useful.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So there's no specific time, time, period kind of a fixed to them.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So these mon models, formal and informal, have pros and cons to them.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So with formal mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Some of the advantages are advantages are that it ensures that every mentee who wants a mentor has one.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So this can help to create more equal access to mentoring
Ellen Bahr (she/her): a disadvantage of formal mentoring is that if the match Isn't good, the relationship might not be productive, or the 2 people might just kind of fail to to form any kind of useful relationship.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and if there's no option given to either the Mentor or the mentee to discontinue that relationship, or
Ellen Bahr (she/her): to perhaps request a different pairing.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): they might be disappointed in the quality of the experience, or you know the worst case scenario. It might be, you know, kind of a damaging relationship to to the Mentee.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So in informal mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): some advantages are that
Ellen Bahr (she/her): mentors and mentees voluntarily choose each other generally. So this is perhaps more likely to result in.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know, a compatible and satisfying pairing for
for the 2.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And if the relationship isn't productive, either party is really free to leave it, find a different mentor or a different mentee.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): There is really. There is evidence that informal mentoring relationships tend to be more beneficial to mentees than formal mentoring relationships.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): The the major downside to informal mentoring is that
there's a risk that some potential mentees are never approached by a potential mentor
mentor. Sometimes he got people
Ellen Bahr (she/her): who they identify with, who they see, maybe as a a mini version of themselves at the same point in the career. So there's a risk that an informal mentoring some entities just might not be approached.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): It's also possible that mentors sorry mentees might not seek out a mentor because they might not
Ellen Bahr (she/her): realize how a mentor can help them.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): or they might have trouble finding mentors that they can identify with.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know, there is a risk of kind of an uneven distribution of mentoring guidance and informal mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): It's also true that sometimes the the librarians who are most in need of mentoring
Ellen Bahr (she/her): might have the most difficult time accessing it. So a number of studies have suggested that high performers have more access to informal mentoring than average or low performers.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): so whether one approach or the other is more effective is something that is debated a lot in the literature, and I don't know if it's going to ever really be resolved.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): But I guess for me An important issue is this issue of act of equal access to mentoring, and how to ensure equal access, regardless of which approach we take.
Formal and informal mentoring are also kind of on opposite polls in terms of structure and flexibility.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Maybe you can sense that with formal entry, mentoring being more highly structured and informal mentoring generally being more loosely structured.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So
Ellen Bahr (she/her): my personal conclusion is that both approaches are useful, and there can be benefits to combining some elements of each and a mentoring program. So just like with the models you don't necessarily have to choose just one or the other.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So one of the more interesting readings that I did
Ellen Bahr (she/her): was a book chapter by Monica Bajage. I hope I'm. Pronouncing that correctly. The chapter is called Lanterns and Street signs effective mentoring for greater equity in the Academy.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and she uses this metaphor
Ellen Bahr (she/her): of lanterns and street signs to illustrate possible approaches to mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So when a mentor uses lantern, mentoring they're focusing on illuminating possible paths that a mentee might take to lead to success
Ellen Bahr (she/her): when they're using straight sign mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): They're orienting the mentee towards strategies for success that have worked in the past.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): perhaps strategies that that Mentor used in the past, and that worked well for them.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So this reading was really kind of eye opening for me, because it got me thinking about
Ellen Bahr (she/her): tensions between asking librarians to fit into the existing culture
Ellen Bahr (she/her): on one hand and making room for organizational growth. On the other hand.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): organizational change and individual growth. Maybe
Ellen Bahr (she/her): so. Well, I think you know, acculturation is an important aspect of mentoring for many of us. We we want our new librarians to have insight into the institutional culture, norms, expectations, and things like that.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): but I think it's helpful, and probably even essential to balance this with an openness to new ideas
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and new ways of doing things.
So this is where lantern mentoring can help, because
by allowing Mentees to chart their own course, understand kind of some of the paths they might take, but letting them decide
Ellen Bahr (she/her): how to how to pursue that path, we can reduce pressure on junior faculty to conform.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Okay. So next I'm going to turn to describing
Ellen Bahr (she/her): my own institutional context here, and why we perceive the need for more mentoring opportunities in our library.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So a major fract factor for us is a recent transition from having a majority of tenured librarians here to now, having a majority of untenured librarians. So we currently have 5 on tenured librarians and 2 tenured, not including our Dean.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So this chat the shift happened over. I don't know the last 5 years or so, as many of our senior librarians retired, and we had, you know, unfortunately.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): the ability to replace them with tenure track librarians.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So with more librarians joining us, the issue of Mentoring is coming up more frequently
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and informal conversation conversations that we've had amongst ourselves, and that I've had with the library administration indicated that there was some interest in thinking about how we might expand mentoring opportunities.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So when I had the chance to apply for Sabbatical. I proposed to focus on this issue of mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): I wanted to learn more about how it's practiced in other libraries, and how we might meet the needs of our growing cohort of tenure track librarians here.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So during the Sabbatical, which was this last spring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): one of the first things I did after kind of a rushed literature review
Ellen Bahr (she/her): was to develop a needs assessment
Ellen Bahr (she/her): in the form of an online survey. So when the survey was ready, I worked with our irb on campus to get approval.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And then
Ellen Bahr (she/her): I I really wanted to try to protect anonymity because we're such a small group, so I didn't ask the respondents to identify themselves as on tenured tenured or library administration.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and the survey included a mixture of, you know, like multiple choice questions and open-ended questions.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): asking questions about things like their satisfaction with existing mentoring opportunities, potential program goals and an expanded program, their desired Mentor characteristics and preferred mentoring models.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So no one was required to participate in the survey, but fortunately everyone here did so. We have total of, you know, 9. Sorry. 7 respondents to the survey.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): so I I don't have time today to go into all of the survey results, so I think i'll just highlight a few things that might be of interest.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So one of the things that the survey asked about
Ellen Bahr (she/her): was factors that contribute to the retention of tenure track librarians.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So here are some of the items that came up
Ellen Bahr (she/her): roughly in order from, you know the things that were most important to people
Ellen Bahr (she/her): to less important. But all of these all of these things were important.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So
Ellen Bahr (she/her): mentoring in support of the 10 promotion and tenure process shows up on this list.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and it is an important factor in retention.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): But I think it's important to situate it this year this way, and realize that you know it's not the only important factor. It's one of many important factors when it comes to
retaining our librarians.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So the survey also asked about desired program elements or characteristics of our program.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and the items that rose to the top of the list. There were to have clear program goals
to recognize mentoring as a service activity in our libraries.
ongoing program assessment.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): flexibility, and responsiveness to changing needs
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and a voluntary rather than mandatory participation in formal mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So this last one was a surprise to me because I I thought, when I set out on this project that
Ellen Bahr (she/her): a formal mentoring program would probably be the likely outcome.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So you know, it's good thing that I reached out to everyone, because that is not the direction that we went in. It turned out that our tenure track librarians were not particularly interested in that aspect of a mentoring program.
Another survey question asked about what priority
Ellen Bahr (she/her): they would assign to mentoring, thinking about all the other priorities that we have going on in the library.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So everyone said that mentoring was either a medium or a high priority. The majority said medium.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and at the same time most said that they could dedicate only a few hours each month to mentoring activities.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So this, you know, this really made it clear to me. It to me that we have to strike a balance between the desire for additional mentoring opportunities and the time that's available to us.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Okay. So after sharing the survey results with the librarians and our library administrators.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and we had a few different conversations talking about
Ellen Bahr (she/her): the results. And you know kind of what what we'd like to achieve with
Ellen Bahr (she/her): with our mentoring here in the library. I took that information, and I, you know, drafted a
Ellen Bahr (she/her): some pieces of our program.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So it's still a work in progress.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): But right now our plan includes these elements. We have a guiding philosophy.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): We have program goals. We have mentoring activities, and we have really just the beginnings of of the assessment piece. That's something that i'm still working on.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So
Ellen Bahr (she/her): the guiding philosophy. I thought that it would be helpful to
Ellen Bahr (she/her): articulate a kind of guiding philosophy for a program, capturing some of the things that came out in the survey, and some of the themes that came up in our conversations here in the library.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So Our philosophy includes these elements that we want to balance, providing, meaningful mentoring opportunities
Ellen Bahr (she/her): with time constraints
Ellen Bahr (she/her): that we want to find a balance between institutional cultivation and an openness to new ideas
Ellen Bahr (she/her): that we will periodically seek feedback on. How well we're meeting our goals.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and that will remain flexible, so that the program is responsive to changing needs.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So, based on the survey responses, we also identified these specific goals for our program.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So first to support our tenure track librarians
Ellen Bahr (she/her): in with a special focus on the years leading up to tenure.
and related to that to, you know, hopefully improve retention as well.
also to create opportunities for camaraderie and mutual support among our on tenure librarians.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and this goal stands from the fact that our tenure track librarians had a lot of interest in peer mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and then finally to connect our new librarians to people and resources
across campus and hopefully beyond as well.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So next we identified some activities to support those goals. So our main activities are regular meetings between the tenure track librarian and the dean of Libraries
Ellen Bahr (she/her): ongoing guidance from the promotion and tenure chair
Ellen Bahr (she/her): peer mentoring, which is a new activity for us
something we're calling a mentoring opportunities matrix, which i'll explain in a few minutes
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and help with finding additional mentors. And this is new, and also still in process at this point.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So i'll just briefly describe each of these activities.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So the first one is regular meetings between the tenure track librarian and the Dean of Libraries.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): who, I will note, is also the library and supervisor. So supervisors are not typically called on to be mentors because of, you know, the potential conflicts of interest that can come into play there.
But we thought it was important to acknowledge and kind of define the Dean's role in mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So in our library the Dean has primary responsibility for guiding the day-to-day work of the librarians.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and when a librarian is first hired. He spends a lot of time with them, orienting them to their position to their
responsibilities.
and so presenting a lot of information about the libraries and the institution, and answering a lot of questions from them.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So when the new librarian comes on board, those meetings are really frequent to get them up to speed and get them able to begin working in their position.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And then, after that, meetings are typically monthly, which is the schedule that the rest of us follow.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So I think that
Ellen Bahr (she/her): a benefit to defining the Dean's role in mentoring is that it helps to clarify what other mentors are not expected to do you know which is, namely, to guide the day to day work of the librarian? That is really on the role of the Dean and the Supervisor?
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Another activity that's already in place, but which we're now kind of explicitly thinking about as a mentoring activity is the ongoing guidance provided by the library's promotion and tenure chair.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So, like the Dean, this person also evaluates tenure track librarians, so we wouldn't want this person to be the sole mentor.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): but the chair does make contributions when it comes to guiding our tenure track librarians through the promotion and 10 year process.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): which is something that our tenure track librarian says was was important to them in in mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So the promotion of tenure chair supports our tenure track librarians in a variety of ways.
first, by ensuring that they're aware of expectations and deadlines for promotion and tenure.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Second, by guiding them in the preparation of materials that are part of the pnt process. So things like activities, reports and dossier for decision years.
And then the chair also meets with each tenure track librarian at least once a year
Ellen Bahr (she/her): to talk about their progress towards tenure, and to think about what's coming next in the P. And T. Cycle.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So our goal here is to make the P. And T. Process as clear and transparent as possible.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And you know, so our librarians understand what's expected of them, and where they stand at any point in the process, and for them to have a clear person to go to if they have questions.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So peer mentoring is a new activity for us, and one that I wasn't very familiar with. Before I started working on this project.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): our tenure track librarians expressed a lot of interest in peer mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): It turns out that it's actually a pretty good fit for us.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): because we have a shortage of senior librarians, you know, who are available to take on the mentor role, and we have a critical mass of
Ellen Bahr (she/her): 10 new track librarians at a variety of levels, or a variety of stages in the pnt process.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So because there was so much interest in peer mentoring, and because
Ellen Bahr (she/her): it doesn't take maybe as much. Excuse me
Ellen Bahr (she/her): as much time and effort to get going as some other
Ellen Bahr (she/her): mentoring activities do. We decided that we would get going with it right away in the fall semester.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): so
Ellen Bahr (she/her): we left it to our tenure track librarians to organize themselves. We didn't put any parameters on it. We didn't.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): define how this component would necessarily be structured.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): We left it to them to to organize it.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So one of our tenure track librarians has taken the lead
Ellen Bahr (she/her): in this particular activity in organizing meetings.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): so I asked her, for you know just a little bit of information about how it's been going.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So she said that they've they've met it as a group a few times so far. They've been meeting at a
Ellen Bahr (she/her): cafe here in town.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and the focus of their conversation has mostly been research and scholarship type activities, sharing with each other what they're up to, giving each other feedback asking for help if it's needed that sort of thing.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So I included a brief quote here from the same librarian. She said that the group, feeling that this has created has been very satisfying.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So it seems to me that peer mentoring can.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know, contribute and help with some of those psychosocial factors that I mentioned earlier. So you know.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): providing opportunities for librarians at the same level, to share mutual concerns, to give and receive messages of reassurance and acceptance, and you know hopefully to create some social connections in the workplace as well.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So that's just some anecdotal information about how the peer mentoring is going.
So another new activity is what we're calling this mentoring opportunities matrix.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): which is basically a spreadsheet
Ellen Bahr (she/her): with mentoring opportunities down the left hand side
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and possible sources of mentoring support across the top.
So the purpose is to provide our tenure track librarians with some guidance about potential mentoring topics, and where they might go for help.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So this will be a working document that will, you know, continue to edit
Ellen Bahr (she/her): as we go forward. Here's just a like a little snapshot of it, and i'll share this full document with you. This is just a a piece of it, and I know you can't really look at it very closely in this format.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So the final element of our program is assisting our tenure track librarians with finding additional mentors.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So this aspect of our program is optional, but we do strongly encourage our librarians to take advantage of it.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): We haven't really gotten going with this activity. Yet, apart from asking our librarians if they're interested.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and some are, and some are not.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So. I think. One way to think about. Our overall approach to mentoring is that
Ellen Bahr (she/her): the Dean and the promotion and tenure chair will just in some in some ways serve as
Ellen Bahr (she/her): kind of formal internal mentors.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And then that relationship hopefully can serve as a springboard for helping our librarians to develop additional mentors additional mentoring relationships
Ellen Bahr (she/her): with people outside of the libraries, and even outside of the institution.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So one of my goals for the spring semester is to.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know, move ahead with this aspect of the program and start working with our
Ellen Bahr (she/her): 10, your track librarians to find additional mentors.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So this kind of brings me back to the topic of mentoring networks which I mentioned earlier in the presentation as one
Ellen Bahr (she/her): possible mentoring model.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So I think that most faculty most librarians
Ellen Bahr (she/her): benefit from having
Ellen Bahr (she/her): more than one mentor.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and also benefit from having mentors within our organization and outside of our organization. So you know this is partly because we have. We have kind of dual loyalties to our organization, and also to the profession
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and the degree to which we're we feel connected to those different entities can vary over a career so most early career. Librarians probably have a stronger
Ellen Bahr (she/her): connection with the profession, and then many librarians. Later in their career. I've been here at Alfred for some time might feel a greater connection to their institution.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Not that the other loyalty isn't there as well, but it's just the degree to which we feel connected with them.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So I think that, helping our librarians to develop mentoring networks
might be one way that we can contribute to mentoring without
Ellen Bahr (she/her): kind of trying to take it all on within our own libraries.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So, expanding this man, mentoring networks for our librarians.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So I think some of the gap here can be filled with mentoring programs like the one that sunny law is offering now, or the kinds of mentoring programs that are available through Ala and its divisions, so those will be formal mentoring opportunities
Ellen Bahr (she/her): when it comes to informal mentoring relationships. I suspect that some of Our librarians
Ellen Bahr (she/her): probably have an easier time finding mentors than some other librarians do.
So I've been thinking about how we might structure a workshop or training
Ellen Bahr (she/her): for new librarians about how to go about finding informal mentors
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and developing a mentoring network. So perhaps the workshop could cover things like talking about the value of of mentoring networks and informal mentors.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): attitudes and dispositions that can be helpful to developing a meaningful mentoring relationship, how how to approach a potential mentor, and what to expect in the way of support, and how to think about how that relationship might be structured or take place.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So this is a new area of exploration exploration for me. I'm really just kind of beginning to think about it.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And if any of you are interested in brainstorming about how to create informal mentoring networks, you know, across Sunni. That's something I'd definitely be interested in talking more about.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Okay, so just about wrapping up here.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): If you're interested in you know, developing a mentoring program in your library, or perhaps rethinking how you're doing, mentoring
here are some
Ellen Bahr (she/her): posed program development steps. So these come from my experience as well as a lot of readings that I've done about mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So I would
Ellen Bahr (she/her): first start with an informal conversation in your library. Talk to some of your colleagues talk to the library administration. Try to get a sense of whether there's a perceived need and interest in in spending some time on mentoring.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): If there is. I would then think about how you might do a needs assessment with your stakeholders.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and it doesn't have to be elaborate. It. Can you know it could be an online survey like I did, or it could be just some conversations, individually or as a group.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): But what's important, I think here is to involve the stakeholders in that discussion. So you know, in my case, if I hadn't reached out to our
Ellen Bahr (she/her): librarians, and especially the tenure track librarians, I might have
gone in a completely different direction that wasn't really consistent with what what was important to them.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): the next step would be to consider the various mentoring models, and what might be the best fit thinking about your your local environment, and also keeping in mind that you can kind of mix and Mac match the models.
Then, once you identify goals, think about what kinds of activities you might develop to support those goals.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and, of course, who's going to be responsible for what? How are you going to make all this happen? And then, finally.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know, establishing a feedback or assessment mechanism, and then making adjustments going forward in response to that feedback.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and my library. We're considering this to be a pilot year. And you know, after the years over we'll get some feedback get some input from people about how things are going.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and we really want to view our program as very open and flexible, so that we can tweak it going forward as needs change.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So, while our program might seem kind of loosely structured, it's kind of that way by design, so that we have a lot of flexibility going forward.
so
Ellen Bahr (she/her): I put some documents up on a lib guide. The slides from this presentation the
Ellen Bahr (she/her): poster that I did over the summer
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and some of the documents from our program, the mentoring matrix and things like that.
So I invite you to look at that at some point.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and then. Otherwise I think i'll stop there, and we can, You know I'm happy to try to answer questions. I'm interested in hearing about your experience with mentoring whether any of this resonates, or maybe doesn't resonate with your experience.
And then exploring that question of how we might collaborate a bit more across.
Cori Wilhelm: Thanks, Ellen, and thank you. Your bans. You put the link in the chat so it clickable. Now.
Cori Wilhelm: yeah, that's great.
Cori Wilhelm: I had a couple of questions kind of thinking about this, and I came from a very small campus previously, and some of our campuses we know are very small, and you mentioned how that you know kind of played into how you set this program up because you only had so many tenured versus you track people.
Cori Wilhelm: I wondered if you thought of looking outside the department.
Cori Wilhelm: You know there's there's
Cori Wilhelm: external mentors who are librarians from other campuses. But
Cori Wilhelm: have did you consider, when do this
Cori Wilhelm: external to libraries? Mentors? So maybe somebody in student affairs is like.
yeah.
Cori Wilhelm: a really great employee who might be, you know, a really great mentor role to partner them with one of the newer librarians.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Yeah, we we thought about external to library. I think more thinking about faculty outside of the library, but I like the idea of you know it doesn't have wouldn't have to be a faculty member.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Yeah. So i'm hoping that with that final piece of the program helping people to develop mentoring networks. We can now
help them to find faculty on campus or people outside of the libraries that they can
Ellen Bahr (she/her): develop a relationship with.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So you know.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): I think we, you know. We also considered whether a senior librarian here should be assigned to each of the tenure track librarians, but that was
Ellen Bahr (she/her): definitely not something that they were interested in. So I think it's just been a little bit harder to tackle that piece of well. How do we find formal or informal mentors outside of the libraries. But I really want to get to that part next.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): But I think the internal mentoring from the chair from the P. And t chair, and the Dean is also really important, just as a foundation. So every librarian will get that, regardless of whether they want to pursue these other mentoring networks.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and I suspect that
Ellen Bahr (she/her): a small number of our tiny track librarians said that they weren't particularly interested in finding additional mentors. I I think that they probably already have strong mentoring networks. I i'd like to explore that a little bit more, but I think that may be the case where
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and then some of our tenure track. Librarians, I think, are struggling with that part of how do I find additional mentors? How do I?
Ellen Bahr (she/her): You know? How do I contact someone. How do I ask them, what does that look like? So that's it's a really big part of the program that we kind of we haven't really gotten to yet. But that's the next thing I really want to focus on.
Cori Wilhelm: Yeah. And I can imagine if there you were
Cori Wilhelm: you to the profession or newer to the campus. That would be even more of a struggle Trying to you know. Who am I supposed to go to to do mentoring? I thought the the matrix that you shared
Cori Wilhelm: is awesome. I think that's something i'd like to share out widely with
Cori Wilhelm: a lot of sunny folks as just a nice
Cori Wilhelm: model of
Cori Wilhelm: you know. Where do you go for this, and who is appropriate to ask
Cori Wilhelm: different questions up? So I think that's great, and I appreciate also that you included the assessment.
Cori Wilhelm: because I I think you had a really nice point that
Cori Wilhelm: you thought you knew what they wanted. But then, when you actually.
Cori Wilhelm: Yes.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): yeah, that was a surprise to me.
Cori Wilhelm: So our
Cori Wilhelm: audience
Cori Wilhelm: Oh, we have a question that I was gonna say feel free to throw a question in the chat, or your hand, or unmute. However.
Cori Wilhelm: Katherine, in the chat said, i'm wondering if it would be helpful to incorporate reflexive practice for how staff work and communicate
Cori Wilhelm: to help them decide what would be a good fit. Maybe something like Myers
Cori Wilhelm: assessment.
Cori Wilhelm: You're saying to me to pair a mentor, and then T:
Cori Wilhelm: Yes.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): yeah, that's a really interesting idea. And
Ellen Bahr (she/her): I don't remember coming across that and all the readings that I did.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And I guess that's
Ellen Bahr (she/her): to find your own weaknesses and strengths. Yeah.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): yeah, I I honestly hadn't thought of that. It could be something to explore.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): maybe in a way, informal mentoring helps with that because
Ellen Bahr (she/her): people maybe just kind of
Ellen Bahr (she/her): instinctively
Ellen Bahr (she/her): No, when
Ellen Bahr (she/her): they found a mentor that complements their strengths and weaknesses, or something, whereas with you know, kind of an assigned formal mentor. Sometimes
you kinda
Ellen Bahr (she/her): have to take what you get, and it might not be the best pairing.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): I mean, I think it's also worth.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know, giving people the opportunity to try out different people for mentors, and then, you know, see kind of what sticks and stick with that person where you really feel a connection with them, and you can develop a, you know, trust and all those kinds of things.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): But yeah, I think that's an interesting idea to think about.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): You know. What are you trying some weaknesses, and really working from that point of view and and using using a tool to figure that out.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So
Cori Wilhelm: yeah, it looks like you, too.
Maureen, Did you have?
Maureen Clements: I did, Ellen? That was really great. I really enjoyed that presentation, and and the work that you've done on this. I it's it's very relevant to what we're trying to do in sls.
Corey and I are creating
Maureen Clements: sort of new librarian cohorts, and not necessarily new librarian, but new roles. Right? So we have a new library directors group. We have a new electronic resources, library and group, and and I think the concepts behind that are trying to create peer to peer
mentoring relationships within.
Maureen Clements: So people are able to informally meet, start, you know, reaching out. It's one way, and that's it. That's a great. I would love to talk to you more about ideas for collaborating across that, you know. I think there's other areas, too, and not so much in the actual tenure process, but like
Maureen Clements: the aspects of librarianship itself. So
Maureen Clements: cataloging really lends itself well to a mentorship program where someone you can go to ask informal questions about for librarians who might be
Maureen Clements: working solo in in different schools. And
Maureen Clements: let's yeah, absolutely. And and also to and and seeing Yvonne hop into like informal mentoring networks for archiving and institutional repositories and those types of things where so I think we're really trying to.
Maureen Clements: We're thinking about these concepts, too, and how you grow them and
Maureen Clements: learn how to be
Maureen Clements: good, you know. Learn because our jobs are really complicated. So
Maureen Clements: there's so many aspects of it. But
Ellen Bahr (she/her): yeah, I agree with you, Maureen, and that's that's the piece that's really missing for us. I think right now, because you know we can help them internally with the pnt process. But each of us
Ellen Bahr (she/her): is the only one here who does what we do.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and so that's that's where we really need the help. Isn't finding you know, someone else who does our job.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know, and can be a sounding board, can share their experience, if you know, if our librarian is very new to their to their area.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So that's kind of what I was thinking about in Sunny, I think is.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): I don't know. Maybe we can make another matrix of people who, you know, are interested in providing mentoring and people who are looking for mentoring and see where the overlaps are, and it can be both peer mentoring or mentoring from. You know, someone who has more experience. I really think that both are valuable.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Pure mentoring, I think, is hugely valuable, and I hadn't thought about it that much before
Ellen Bahr (she/her): embarking on this. So
Ellen Bahr (she/her): but you know peers can help each other, and sometimes it's easier to ask a peer than to ask
Ellen Bahr (she/her): someone more senior or someone who's in like a position of evaluating you or something like that.
Maureen Clements: Yeah, it'd be great to think about that some more. Yeah, yeah, I'd love to chat more offline to that ways that we can be.
Maureen Clements: It's great. Thanks. I also just had. Yeah, I was gonna say very funny care stories that I had. I had a peer mentor, and they actually wanted me to do work for them, and then then tried to sell me stuff for our bond. Their daughter was in our bond sales when I was like. I think I need a new mentor. So I've had that experience of
Maureen Clements: Okay.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Yeah, that's the messy side of mentoring because it's 2 human beings, you know, and a relationship, and things. Can. Things can go really well, or they can go really badly.
Cori Wilhelm: Susan, do you have a question?
Well, yes, I was going to sort of follow up on what Maureen was talking about, because.
Susan Davis (UB): you know again, there's mentors for for different purposes, and
Susan Davis (UB): you know, to start with. This was kind of about.
Susan Davis (UB): I guess I assumed it was more about that, you know, achieving tenure what you would need to do. And of course, across Sunni
Susan Davis (UB): it varies
Susan Davis (UB): so much. And when you were talking about like well, the Dean, you know the Supervisor shouldn't really be the mentor. But I thought, well, yeah, because of being at the University. We have just all kinds of complicated, you know, conflict of interest issues that who who prepares, like the dossier for for your
Susan Davis (UB): processes, and and again does
Susan Davis (UB): do the librarian dossier
Susan Davis (UB): ultimately ever go beyond the library for the the final tenure thing where it it like at a University center like you be, we do again. We are processes complicated by the fact that you have these other stages, but there is like a Vice
Susan Davis (UB): President or Vice provost. Excuse me for faculty fares that you'd be. That's supposed to at least help with the process part, and they do like an annual. You know, update where people can go and ask questions and listen to them, can explain how the the process works, but like to our promotion and tenure committee
Susan Davis (UB): we are, we are not really to.
Susan Davis (UB): Yeah, we we can be mentors, but it has to be a very limited sort of way again to just so that there's no
Susan Davis (UB): hint of.
Susan Davis (UB): I don't want to say impropriety, but you know that there can be advantages like you. We have to get disinterested parties letters so from outside. Those are people for whom, whatever the decision is, you know it's not going to have any impact on their career and to find tenure track librarians at
Susan Davis (UB): a au institutions is harder and harder because so many places don't have faculty status for
Susan Davis (UB): librarian, so it's really complicated. But
Susan Davis (UB): if you're looking for Job or, you know, work areas. Again, if you have professional association involvement.
Susan Davis (UB): you know, different groups offer programs. I've done mentor programs for Nasig. It was Alex. I don't know what course doing. The new division in Ala, you know whether people belong to your local acr, chapter, or even a crl itself. Those are.
Susan Davis (UB): you know those are places to to look. Or again, if you're active in the profession in some way you happen upon people at a meeting, or you're online, and you see, you know somebody's name in the chat. They're asking questions or they're expl expressing things similar to what you're interested in.
Susan Davis (UB): You know you should definitely feel free to take their name down or and make an inquiry. You know that's
Susan Davis (UB): I guess i'm old school enough. That that's kind of how I I ended up meeting other librarians
Susan Davis (UB): in it
Susan Davis (UB): different conferences at different levels. And just, you know, that became sort of like my my cohort, you know I saw them at conferences. We did social things together, other things, and and that was really
Susan Davis (UB): extremely helpful
Susan Davis (UB): for for me. You could also, again, with depending on the type of position the vendors that you interact with. They They may have ways to help you. They may have trainings, or again, some kind of
Susan Davis (UB): users group with the subsection on instruction or something. So there's there are many things that again you have to do a little digging.
Susan Davis (UB): but
Susan Davis (UB): being involved more than just at your own Campus, I think, is a is a key to to being exposed to the opportunities that are available out there.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): I agree with you, Susan. I I think what I may be perceiving with some of our newer librarians. Is it's just kind of not on their radar.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know, to use those opportunities to find mentors
Ellen Bahr (she/her): so helping them to. You know better, understand how
Ellen Bahr (she/her): why they might want to mentor and and how they might, You know, kind of
Ellen Bahr (she/her): develop that that type of relationship.
I realized that there
Ellen Bahr (she/her): I've been talking about the role of the P. And T. Chair here at Alfred, and this might be a little confusing. It's not the chair of the Pnt Committee. Every institution has different lingo for this stuff, so our P. And T. Chair is. It's like the Faculty chair that works with our librarians as they go through the process. So
Ellen Bahr (she/her): I mean you do have to be objective and keep some
Ellen Bahr (she/her): some distance with all these things, but it's also a little bit of an advocacy role, and you know, helping, making sure they understand the process and what's expected. So
Cori Wilhelm: yeah, and I thank you for sharing Susan, because I think you know you kind of spoke to. There's so many differences between our campuses and sunny, and
Cori Wilhelm: you know Ub. Definitely has its onset of
Cori Wilhelm: procedures, and you know it's obviously one of the biggest libraries, and so it's a very different approach to Mentoring.
Cori Wilhelm: I had one more question, Ellen, about the peer mentoring you, said the folks.
Cori Wilhelm: We're meeting informally, like over coffee and that kind of thing. Do you provide topics or prompts for conversation? Or is it more just, informal, free, flowing?
Ellen Bahr (she/her): We did not do that. I left it open to them.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): or we left it open to them.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): One of the things I did in the survey was to ask about different topics, like for workshops and interest, and there. Wasn't a whole lot of interest. I even asked like to suggest topics, and
Ellen Bahr (she/her): there wasn't much, you know, interest there, either.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): and we also have offered, you know, if they want the P. And T. Chair, or the Dean to come to any of those meetings to address particular question or issue. You know we're, we're more than happy to do that.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): So, for now they seem to be happy, you know, just meeting as a group and helping each other, and
Ellen Bahr (she/her): you know, maybe just even getting to know each other a little bit better as that group without, you know, the the other senior people sitting around the table, too. So
Ellen Bahr (she/her): yeah, it sounds like you've enjoyed it.
Cori Wilhelm: It sounds like they appreciate that opportunity. Yeah. So maybe disengage from the formalized work.
Cori Wilhelm: you know, all the time. And just yeah, get to know each other and provide that support.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): Yeah.
Ellen Bahr (she/her): And you know, there's there's less pressure because they're not evaluating each other. I mean they do peer reviews, but
Ellen Bahr (she/her): the Forum is really designed to help each other so, and I think they all go into with that spirit. So
Cori Wilhelm: any other questions from our audience.
Cori Wilhelm: I really appreciate you sharing all the resources, Allen. I will
Cori Wilhelm: link that out with the recording
Cori Wilhelm: that folks who are not able to attend can both be the recording, but then access all the resources as well.
Cori Wilhelm: I'll go ahead.