Mentoring Climate Survey - The Center for Faculty Excellence

The Spring 2022 Mentoring Climate Survey closed Tuesday, May 31, 2022, and was the final distribution of the survey as part of TEAM ADVANCE’s NSF-funded research activities.

Purpose

TEAM ADVANCE is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded program (Award No. 1760187) designed to promote effective faculty mentoring, with an emphasis on supporting women of color, white women, and other underrepresented faculty groups at UNC-Chapel Hill. TEAM ADVANCE seeks to measure the impact of resources and programs provided to department chairs/division heads, faculty mentors, faculty mentees, and others.

All permanent faculty (tenured, tenure-track, and fixed-term) are encouraged to complete our Mentoring Climate Survey. Completion of the survey will help TEAM ADVANCE understand how faculty are mentored at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Faculty will receive instructions for completing the survey and an individual survey link through email. Regular reminders will follow.

All permanent faculty (tenured, tenure-track, and fixed-term) are asked to complete the survey during each sampling window.

About the Survey

The survey consists of 2 demographic questions; 16 questions related to faculty mentoring and departmental mentoring programs; 4 brief open-ended questions; and 11 questions about your participation in any TEAM ADVANCE programming. The survey takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. All permanent faculty (tenured, tenure-track, and fixed-term) are asked to complete the survey during each sampling window. Following the Mentoring Climate Survey is a series of 9 questions about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on your personal and professional life as a faculty member. Faculty may choose to opt-out of answering the COVID-19 questions.

The Mentoring Climate Survey takes approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. Completion of the COVID-19 questions may take another 5 minutes.

Participation in the survey—in part or in whole—is completely voluntary.

Data Collection and Management

TEAM ADVANCE, in collaboration with the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA), will administer the Mentoring Climate Survey via Qualtrics 2-3 times per academic year (2019-20, 2020-21, and 2021-22). TEAM ADVANCE will work with OIRA to track responses over time. In order to ensure the confidentiality of participant responses, an OIRA staff member who is not directly involved with data analysis will remove identifying data and replace it with a randomly generated code. All survey results will be stored in a secure, password-protected digital database accessible only by TEAM ADVANCE and designated associates in OIRA. Data will be reported in aggregate. Participants will not be identified by name unless they request to be contacted by TEAM ADVANCE at the end of the survey.

Data Usage

TEAM ADVANCE will share reports of the aggregated data with campus and departmental leadership to promote better understanding of the University climate related to faculty development and mentoring, and to respond to trends as TEAM ADVANCE’s interventions are put into place. Aggregated data reports will also be shared with the NSF, our external evaluator, members of our steering committee and advisory boards, and may be included in publications and other products that result from TEAM ADVANCE’s project activities.

For more information about TEAM ADVANCE, visit https://cfe.unc.edu/team-advance. For questions about the Mentoring Climate Survey, contact teamadvance@unc.edu.