Contents

How the PFF program benefits ISU

What faculty can do to help

Being a PFF mentor

Faculty interest form

How the PFF program benefits ISU

"I believe that the best argument [for PFF] is that it will raise the prestige and reputation of ISU in the long run by producing professors that increasingly perform at a higher level than other graduating Ph.D.’s."

Ph.D. student in the College of Engineering, ISU

PFF provides the following benefits to the Iowa State community:

• Significant recruitment tool to attract excellent graduate students
• Enhanced professional training, especially important for large grants such as IGERT, GAANNS, VIGRE. Federal agencies that award these grants assume or even require that the institution has a program in place that is aimed at preparing future faculty
• Enhanced interdepartmental and inter-institutional collegiality
• Enhanced emphasis on teaching excellence
• Enhanced graduate student satisfaction
• Enhanced graduate student placement preparation

PFF provides the following benefits to graduate students or postdoctoral fellows:

• Provides new teaching information (e.g., learning styles) and teaching opportunities. Many graduate students have been only lab TAs, if that. PFF allows them to acquire significant teaching experience.
• Provides current job search information. Many application letters and vitae we see in PFF are of poor quality, including ones currently being used in job searches by Ph.D. students and postdoctoral associates.
• Provides specific information about faculty life at institutions other than research extensive. Many of these students know little, if anything, about schools other than major research universities, yet according to statistics, 2/3 of these graduate students will be professors at schools other than research extensive universities.
• Provides new knowledge about scholarship, such as basics of intellectual property, copyright, and industrial grants.
• Corrects misconceptions, some of which are quite basic. For instance, every PFF class has had a significant number of students who either did not know that coming up for tenure was mandatory, or thought they themselves could determine the number of years they could work before requesting a tenure review.
• Provides new mentoring opportunities. PFF students have high praise for their interactions with their PFF faculty mentors.
• Enhances professional credentialing.

These benefits add up to graduate students better prepared to succeed in the profession.

Perhaps most importantly, since the PFF program is widely known among academic institutions, participants will receive credentials valuable in the academic marketplace. In short, PFF can help participants get a faculty position. PFF participants can receive program documentation, including transcript notations, explanatory letters for portfolio or dossier, and letters of recommendation from mentors.

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What faculty can do to help

The success of the PFF program depends on help from faculty.

PFF needs faculty mentors for each graduate student and post-doc in the program. Faculty can volunteer to be mentors for one or more semesters, meeting with the participant on a twice-monthly basis to discuss faculty-related issues or to participate in activities that will help the participant improve his or her teaching, service, or research.

During the fall and spring semesters, faculty are needed to present seminar and workshop sessions for Gr. St. 585 and 586. Presentations and workshops run for 1-3 hours and may include discussions with the class, question and answer sessions, and small or large-group activities. PFF chooses topics for the seminar sessions based on their usefulness for graduate students and post-docs preparing to start a faculty career.

Because faculty are best equipped to identify graduate students and post-docs who would benefit from PFF, the program depends on faculty recommendations to find many of its participants.

To volunteer for mentoring or presenting in the program, or to suggest a possible participant, please complete the Faculty Interest form. For more information, please contact the Interim Program Director, Holly Bender, at 294-4065 or hbender@iastate.edu.

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Being a PFF mentor

"The most useful part of the whole semester was the faculty mentoring. Through this experience I found that what students need the most is not to have a lecturer feed them information, but to have someone to help them learn, and to encourage them once in awhile. This is what my faculty mentor has done for me during our mentoring sessions, and this is what I tried to do for the student that I taught."

Ph.D. student in Chemical Engineering, ISU

"The PFF mentoring experience was quite gratifying. It was both a pleasure and useful experience to discuss in detail with a keen, up-and-coming academic the various aspects of being a professor (i.e., teaching, research, administration, and professional activities)."

Associate Professor of Material Science & Engineering, ISU

An essential element of a successful PFF program is providing individualized mentoring to participants from faculty both at the students’ university and at partner institutions. These mentors are not the participants’ major professors, who are already involved in the students’ research and program of study within the individual departments. The PFF mentor provides one-on-one interaction geared toward achieving PFF’s objectives:

• To better prepare participants for all aspects of their faculty careers including teaching, service, and research
• To provide participants with a new indepth look at a successful faculty career
• To provide participants with further credentialing for a competitive academic job market

Faculty mentors who choose to participate in the PFF program will be paired with a participating student mentee. Over the course of the semester, the mentor and mentee meet at least twice per month to discuss issues of faculty life, teaching, and PFF events or to participate in teaching or service opportunities. The list of mentor-mentee activities can help guide your meetings.

Each mentor-mentee pairing will create a memorandum of understanding outlining their responsibilities to one another. A copy of this document will be filed with the PFF program early in the semester, and the mentor and mentee will each retain a copy as well. The purpose of this document is to promote conversation between the mentor and mentee; the document is not intended to be a legally binding document but to serve as a tool for establishing a good working relationship. If the document needs to be altered, the mentor and mentee can submit a revision to the PFF program.

At the end of each semester of participation in the program, faculty mentors will be asked to submit written feedback to PFF concerning the mentoring process. At the end of second and subsequent semesters, faculty mentors will be asked to submit written feedback to mentees on their preparation for faculty careers. Mentors are encouraged to provide PFF with a copy of the feedback provided to student mentees.

To volunteer for mentoring or presenting in the program, or to suggest a possible participant, please complete the Faculty Interest form. For more information, please contact the Interim Program Director, Holly Bender, at 515-294-3584, or hbender@iastate.edu.

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