Announcing New Faculty Mentors in Each of Our Schools
February 4, 2021
Dear Faculty,
I write to share exciting news about new support at Brooklyn College for our junior faculty members. Today I am announcing the establishment of five new faculty mentors, one for each school at the college. Their charge is to work together and with the chairs, deans, and faculty in their schools to mentor junior faculty members to achieve tenure and promotion through excellence in research, scholarship and creative work, teaching, and service. In alphabetical order, they are:
Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, Director of the H. Wiley Hitchcock Institute for Studies in American Music, Associate Professor in the Conservatory of Music in the School of Visual Media and Performing Arts. Professor Jensen-Moulton takes a nontraditional approach to mentoring that focuses on mutual learning rather than on a hierarchical mentor-mentee relationship. This parallel mentoring model collapses disciplinary boundaries to engage with the scholar, artist, and/or performer and his or her respective work within its social context(s). She recognizes the deep connections between pedagogy, scholarship, and artistic production, and has long mentored faculty as a past chair of both the Conservatory of Music and the Board for the Center for Teaching.
Rosamond S. King, Director of the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, Associate Professor of English in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Professor King considers mentoring a form of pedagogy and educational leadership that combines listening, teaching, and guidance. She has served as a formal and informal mentor for much of her career, including positions as the Brooklyn College mentor for faculty participating in the CUNY Faculty Diversity Initiative and as the formal mentor for a BC Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellow. She looks forward to leveraging her colleagues' experiences and expertise to grow a culture of mentoring at Brooklyn College.
Peter Lipke, Chair and Professor in the Department of Biology in the School of Natural and Behavioral Sciences. Professor Lipke has extensive experience mentoring at all levels, from high school to faculty. He received the Hinton Research Training Award from the American Society of Microbiology for outstanding contributions toward the research training of underrepresented minorities. He mentored junior faculty at minority-serving institutions: teaching grantsmanship, pre-reviewing proposals, and strategies for enhancing research productivity. He previously served as SCORE director and the Brooklyn College Faculty Fellow for Research Development. He is especially proud that at least five junior faculty mentees and three other SCORE program PI’s from underrepresented groups have earned tenure.
James A. Lynch, Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Business Management in the Koppelman School of Business. Professor Lynch has a deep commitment to supporting his colleagues, believing that proper mentoring is essential for meeting the emerging educational challenges of the 21st century. He knows that trained teachers can have a tremendously positive impact on their students performance and that mentoring helps educators improve their teaching skills, produce strong scholarly work, and increase their self-resilience. He is excited to be working in collaboration with others committed to making Brooklyn College a place where peer mentoring of faculty is at the top of the institution's objectives.
María R. Scharrón-del Río, Associate Dean of the School of Education, Professor and former Program Coordinator of the School Counseling Graduate Program. Associate Dean Scharrón-del Río, the 2017 Claire Tow Distinguished Teacher Award recipient, looks forward to supporting our rising colleagues. Like many faculty members with multiple marginalized identities, they would not have made Brooklyn College their academic home if not for the invaluable mentoring of colleagues who helped them claim space and grow. They believe mentoring goes beyond providing assistance to navigate tenure/promotion, pedagogical expertise, and research/scholarship, but includes helping BIPOC and queer faculty navigate racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and ableism (among other "isms") that continue to challenge our academic community.
Diversifying our faculty is, of course, one of the key goals in our Strategic Plan. But diversifying the faculty is particularly challenging when we face restrictions on faculty hiring at this time. Retaining and nurturing our diverse cadre of junior faculty members for academic success has become all the more important as a result. We are hopeful that these new faculty mentors will become critical resources for our faculty and schools as they develop new structures of peer support.
Yours truly,
Michelle J. Anderson
President, Brooklyn College
