Empowering Junior Faculty: Penn State???s Faculty Development and Mentoring Program

Abstract

Empowerment of faculty is essential for academic success. The Junior Faculty Development Program (JFDP), sponsored by the Office of Professional Development of the Penn State College of Medicine, was established in 2003 with the goal of promoting the development and advancement of junior faculty so they can achieve success in their academic careers. The program consists of two components: a curriculum in research, education, clinical practice, and career development, and an individual project completed under the guidance of a senior faculty mentor. The curriculum provides faculty with knowledge, skills, and resources. Mentoring provides relationships and support. Together, these elements combine to empower junior faculty to better manage their careers. The effectiveness of the program has been demonstrated by several measures: participants evaluated the program highly, demonstrated increases in their perceptions of their own abilities, and completed tasks important to the advancement of their careers. Participants stated they were better prepared to advance their academic careers and that the individual projects would contribute to their career advancement. On the basis of this experience, the authors suggest that faculty development programs should empower faculty so that they can more effectively chart a successful career in academic medicine. This report describes an empowerment model, and the design, implementation, and evaluation of the Junior Faculty Development Program in 2003-04 and 2004-05. The authors offer this program as a model for the benefit of other institutions and for one of their most valuable assets: junior faculty.

Nurturing Passion in a Time of Academic Climate Change

“…Those who are recruited to their first faculty position typically have strong training and demonstrated excellence in research or clinical practice. However, when faced with the complexities of the current academic environment, these enthusiastic individuals are relatively lacking in the knowledge, skills, and guidance that are critical for managing their own careers (22). Moreover, expectations of this younger generation of faculty often differ from those of their more senior colleagues.…”

“…Numerous innovative approaches to effective mentoring are now being developed across medical specialties (6,13,17,(21)(22)(23). While the effectiveness of these various programs remains to be qualitatively assessed, the diversity of these models, which encompasses formalized traditional mentoring, peer mentoring (6), functional mentoring (23), and mentoring committees, provides encouraging evidence that AHCs are beginning to recognize mentoring as a core academic responsibility.…”

Building a chiropractic academy of educators: A needs assessment of selected faculty educators

“…For junior faculty, such relationships have indicated increased understanding of educational processes and expectations, leading to more successful careers, which increases job satisfaction and faculty retention. 11,12 Limitations Like all research, this study has several limitations. Sparse comparative data restrict the authors' conjecture about the external validity of the data from the survey used in the current study.…”

Students’ empowerment model: An approach to the establishment of gen-3 and 4 universities

“…But, reviewing the literature related to empowerment indicates that there is a little research conducted on empowerment in academic environments while empowerment is an important factor in the movement of enhancement and reconstruction of educational institutions (Sullivan, 1995). Thorndyke et al (2006) claimed that empowerment of faculty members of a university comprises two factors of comprehensive educational curriculum and mentoring programs. The former provides necessary knowledge, expertise and resources for professional promotion, education and research and other clinical topics, while the latter simplifies the required relationships and supports.…”