Capstone Online

Faculty mentors join CETLA Director Teresa Redd (center) and Business School Academic Dean Samuel Paschall (center) in the iLab to launch the FRieND program.
(L-R) Michael Frazier, Dominicus So, Virginia Brown,Fang Wu,Laverne Brown,Kay Payne,Paul Hudrlik,Subodh Kulkarni,Sam Paschall(Business School Academic Dean),Teresa Redd (Director, CETLA),Marguerite Neita,Marilyn Irving,Raymond Smith,Barbara Hines,Silvia Martinez,Anita Nahal,John Tharakan,Folahan Ayorinde,Wilfred Johnson

At a reception on Sept. 13, 2007, Howard University’s Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CETLA) launched The “FRieND” Program, a mentoring program that will enable award-winning teachers to mentor colleagues.

Via the password-protected Faculty Resource Network Database (FRND), faculty who are referred to CETLA will be matched with mentors who are strong in the areas where the referred faculty seek guidance. CETLA has already recruited more than 30 mentors from the ranks of faculty who have earned teaching awards or outstanding teaching evaluations from their departments. Once they are matched, mentors and mentees will interact throughout a semester, visiting one another’s classes, sharing syllabi, reviewing one another’s graded exams or papers, discussing pedagogical books or videos, or simply chatting about the mentee’s teaching challenges over lunch. The mentor-mentee relationships will remain strictly confidential.

To free-up time for mentoring, CETLA has invited mentors to earn time-saving student services through a system called Time-Banking (© Edgar S. Cahn, 1987). For instance, in exchange for one hour of mentoring, a mentor will earn an hour of clerical, research or technology services from CETLA’s student employees — services such as scanning documents, posting materials online, searching the Web for multimedia resources, conducting research and more.
“CETLA invited the School of Business to pilot the FRieND Program because the school had demonstrated a strong commitment to improving teaching by referring several faculty members to CETLA for assistance,” said Teresa Redd, director of CETLA. “CETLA and the School of Business expect the program to significantly increase the teaching effectiveness of faculty who are referred to CETLA. At the same time, by linking faculty mentors with referred faculty, the FRieND Program will build a learning community of peers dedicated to improving one another’s teaching.”

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