Master mentors: The process of developing a mentoring model at scale

This is a work in progress paper focused on sharing a new mentor model within an engineering college. Individuals who receive adequate mentoring are more likely to have greater job satisfaction, feel less isolated, and are less susceptible to stress and burnout. Despite the benefits of mentoring, there are few formal mentoring programs within higher education institutions and sparse literature on the best practices for implementing mentorship programs in colleges of engineering. The purpose of this paper is to share the process of creating the “Master Mentor Model” initiative within an engineering college at a large, southwestern institution. The Master Mentor Model is currently being co-constructed collaboratively with input by engineering administration (dean and vice-deans), seven “master mentors” who represent their main academic units in the college, and several staff members. The primary goals of this initiative are (1) define a common set of expectations for mentoring across the college, (2) establish a process for the implementation of mentorship in each school, (3) develop formal milestones for measuring progress, and (4) document and evaluate mentoring activities. This paper will highlight details on the initial steps for developing the Master Mentor Model to meet these goals. It is preferred that the WIP paper is presented in a technical session.