Purpose: This Committee provides a follow-up to the year-long orientation program that faculty participate in during their first year at DePaul. The programs offered are open to all faculty in their second, third, and fourth years. These programs do not attempt to substitute for discipline-specific mentoring; rather, in the same vein as the first-year-faculty orientation, these programs provide opportunities for probationary faculty to come together and discuss their experiences, successes, and frustrations as they move toward tenure. In the Vincentian spirit of interest in and respect for our junior colleagues, the SVdPP mentors contribute appropriate comments and advice from their own perspectives as DePaul teacher-scholars.
There are usually two mentoring sessions per year. This committee also organizes the annual Faculty of Color Luncheon.
Each iteration of the mentoring program consists of a ninety minute session or "Happy Mentoring Hour" most often offered at the end of the working day to accommodate as many faculty as possible. The VdPP mentors will give each session a structure depending on participants’ interests. However, the goal of each session will always be to open up avenues for discussion rather than to channel the conversation in predetermined directions. While the mentoring sessions’ themes correspond to the university’s criteria for tenure and promotion (teaching, research, and service), their objective is not to “prepare” faculty for their tenure reviews but more broadly to help them balance teaching, research, and service commitments and thus to foster their development as well-rounded teacher-scholars at DePaul. In addition to these events, the members of the committee make themselves available for one-to-one mentoring meetings as needed or requested.
Since 2015-2016 this mentoring group is responsible for organizing and hosting of the Annual Faculty of Color Luncheon. Faculty of color of all ranks and colleges are invited to attend. At this luncheon new and recent faculty of color meet more established faculty as well as representatives from DePaul Affinity groups in addition to representatives from Academic Affairs and The Office of Institutional Diversity.
VdPP Committee Project Coordinator: Euan Hague (LALS)