Counseling and Mentoring

Annual Counseling is feedback on performance relative to the standards for reappointment and promotion, and should provide candid and helpful feedback and guidance.  The department is expected to provide annual counseling to all Clinical Assistant Professors and Clinical Associate Professors.

Annual Counseling Form

Your chair, division chief or their designate should schedule a meeting with you annually. If they do not, it is your responsibility to request the meeting.

At this meeting the chair or chief should:

• be familiar with your history at the School
• describe the reappointment/promotion process
• state the criteria for the next upcoming action (from the School of Medicine Faculty Handbook, Chapter 3).
• complete and sign an annual counseling documentation form explaining what was discussed

Topics the chair or chief should discuss with you:

• Criteria and timeline for reappointment or promotion
• Clinical care and clinical teaching activities
• Administrative and/or scholarly activities (if applicable)
• Percent time of appointment and allocation of effort
• Achievement of career goals
• Professional development
• Any planned leaves
• Financial issues

During the course of a reappointment or promotion process, the department will assemble a set of information.  This may include a draft counseling memo based on the information collected; these memos are not required, however.

This memo offers guidance on "the next step in the road", whether it is an expected reappointment or further promotion, and is reviewed by the School and the University.  Once the action has succeeded, the memo is finalized and delivered to the faculty member.

If you have been recently reappointed or promoted and have not received a counseling memo from your department, you may wish to check with your Faculty Affairs Administrator to find out whether one was assembled for you.

Mentoring means on-going advice and support regarding your clinical and teaching activities, any administrative and/or scholarship activities, and work/life balance.

For Clinical Assistant Professors, the offer letter will include the name of your mentor.  You may change mentors, or add additional mentors, at a later date.

Your mentor should be reasonably available to meet with you on an ongoing basis. 

A single mentor may lack expertise in certain areas. Ideally, there should be multiple resources in the department in the event that there are issues which you cannot discuss with your mentor. This can be particularly important in interdisciplinary fields.

It is your responsibility to ensure that mentoring takes place.  You may wish to have an initial meeting with your mentor and discuss expectations for the mentoring relationship, including how often you should meet.

Topics you may cover with your mentor:

• Criteria for reappointment/promotion.
• Balance between clinical care and clinical teaching activities. Administrative and/or scholarly activities, if applicable.
• Strategies for managing time and balancing service.
• Importance of being proactive in managing one’s career (i.e., seeking help and information).
• Building a reputation in the field (e.g., conferences to attend, editorial boards, becoming known to the leaders of the field [these are the referees who will later write evaluation letters for the reappointment/promotion review]).
• Resources for additional guidance on teaching strategies (e.g., Center for Teaching and Learning).
• Any matters of concern.
• Guidance when you are going through life/family transitions that may affect productivity (opportunity to take leaves).

If you are not receiving what you need from your mentor, you can ask for that mentor to provide what you need or change or add mentors as you decide. If you want guidance on choosing another mentor, possible sources are your chair, your division chief, senior faculty within your department, or one of the Associate Deans of Academic Affairs.