How Should Mentoring Work?

The first goal of the Task Force on Mentoring was to identify key needs to be addressed through a mentoring program and to develop a mentoring program appropriate to the Association's capabilities and constituencies.

Based on a review of existing mentoring programs, the Task Force proposed the following a program along the following general outline:

Mentoring will be voluntary and confidential although departments could include participation in mentoring in their rostering descriptions.
Mentoring will operate through email listings of mentors and mentees maintained by APSA (as in the Bunche program).
The program will be driven by the mentee contacting mentors by email.
Participants will agree to a minimum one-year link. All participants will be asked to provide baseline information for evaluation purposes at the end of the three years in which the Task Force operates.
The Association's role is coordination without centralization. E-mail lists will be maintained by the Association with secured password access. APSA will document the participation of mentors to their departments, recognizing their service contribution to the professions.
APSA will support mentoring activities at the national and regional meetings, working with the regional associations as much as possible.
APSA will evaluate the effectiveness of the program after a three-year period.

Martha Kumar (joyntkumar@aol.com) and Ron Schmidt, Sr. (rschmidt@csulb.edu) are the Task Force members in charge of the basic conceptualization of mentoring. They would like to hear from anyone familiar with mentoring programs and willing to help as the Task Force and APSA designs the program and reaches out to establish ties with more traditional forms of professional mentoring and from minority mentoring programs.