A mentoring paradigm for URM and emeriti engineering faculty: Does quantity of contact determine the quality of the relationship for mentees?

Funding

American higher education institutions are faced with a lack of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in engineering, with only 6.3% of all engineering faculty identifying as URM (National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, 2014). An increase in mentoring opportunities has been heralded as a way in which to ensure their retention, tenure, and promotion in academia (Blackwell, 1989; Hyers, Syphan, Cochran, & Brown, 2012; Stanley, 2006). Researchers have found that mentoring by senior faculty is a means by which URM faculty gain knowledge about important career information that many majority men acquire through informal networks (Hyers et al., 2012; Stanley, 2006). This executive summary reports on the efficacy of a new mentoring and advocacy-networking paradigm designed to support URM engineering faculty promotion efforts by mentorship from emeriti faculty. This effort was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (14-7680) under the call and corresponding office for Broadening Participation in Engineering. Comas Lamar Haynes is a Principal Research Engineer / faculty member of the Georgia Tech Research Institute and Joint Faculty Appointee at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His research includes modeling steady state and transient behavior of advanced energy systems, inclusive of their thermal management, and the characterization and optimization of novel cycles. He has advised graduate and undergraduate research assistants and has received multi-agency funding for energy systems analysis and development. Sponsor examples include the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy and NASA. Dr. Haynes also develops fuel cells and alternative energy systems curricula for public and college courses and experimental laboratories. Additionally, he is the co-developer of the outreach initiative, Educators Leading Energy Conservation and Training Researchers of Diverse Ethnicities (ELECTRoDE). He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Florida A&M University and his graduate degrees (culminating in a Ph.D.) from Georgia Tech; and all of the degrees are in the discipline of Mechanical Engineering.