Faculty Mentor Program
The CSUN Faculty Mentor Program provides mentoring services, training, and resources for faculty, staff, and students. We embed the mission of mentoring on this campus within the President’s strategic goals — specifically, increasing student academic achievement, promoting diversity and educational equity, and improving the campus climate.
When most faculty, staff, and students hear the word "mentor," one dominant image comes to mind: that of an old person — almost always male — with white hair (or no hair) involved in a one-to-one, long-term, matching program with a younger person. Yet, in real life, mentors are female as well as male and young as well as old. More importantly, opportunities for mentoring for faculty and staff occur in daily interactions with students, not only through one-to-one, long-term matching programs. Research in higher education points to the importance of the presence of mentors for increasing student academic achievement. Yet, the challenge here at CSUN is carrying out mentoring at a large, commuter campus where formal, one-to-one matching programs are difficult to set up and administer.
In recent years, the Faculty Mentor Program has responded to this challenge by reorganizing services, training projects, and resources to emphasize "mentoring on the run." This innovative approach to mentoring was created by former FMP Coordinator Dr. Gordon Nakagawa and represents a creative response to meeting the needs of students on our campus. "Mentoring on the run" focuses on the mentoring opportunities contained in each interaction of faculty and staff with students — what Provost Kennedy has called the "little moments of mentoring" that can change students’ lives.
For more information, contact the Faculty Mentor Program: Professor Glenn Omatsu, FMP Coordinator, c/o EOP, University Hall 205; telephone, (818) 677-4151; e-mail: glenn.omatsu@csun.edu
• Mentoring in a Learning-Centered University: Some Resources
• Infusing Mentoring into Teaching
• Additional Resources for Teaching Freshmen