Sunday, 17 November 2019: 2:05 PM
Scholarly development and gender equity for advancement among faculty remain key priorities across academic disciplines, including those in healthcare (de Sax Zerden et. al. 2015; Heinrich, 2018). In an undergraduate nursing program, nursing faculty identified challenges and barriers to advancing scholarship, which is necessary for promotion, and formed a team for testing solutions. The literature was reviewed on emerging faculty development innovations in peer mentoring, the scholarship of teaching, and communities of practice (Brody et.al. 2016; Cassese & Holman, 2018; Nick et.al., 2012; Cole & March, 2018; Nowell,White, Marklas & Norris, 2015). As a result, the Woman’s Faculty Support Group (WFSG) was developed in order to provide a supportive climate and unique opportunities for undergraduate nursing faculty to connect and collaborate, geared toward achieving their full academic potential through peer mentorship and scholarship productivity. Virtual mentoring took place weekly over a period of six weeks with 2 cycles. Once weekly hour long virtual team meetings took place, with one member of the support group serving as the facilitator. Each week one faculty member would submit three ongoing projects for review to the group. The facilitator would then assist faculty peers to determine how each would spend one hour focusing their expertise on one of the three project areas. The submitting faculty's hour on scholarship would be substantially amplified by each member's synchronous hour contribution to that work during the virtual session. The hour was broken up into 15 minute intervals with 2 minute breaks in between to ask clarifying questions. Faculty rotated responsibilities, and tasks throughout the six weeks of virtual mentoring. An initial evaluation of the first round of the support group was conducted using 11 Likert scale questions, along with open-ended feedback. Questions focused on the ability to organize scholarship, progress on tasks that were previously challenging, benefit of peer feedback, accountability, productivity, and overall assistance with professional development. Responses were overwhelmingly positive on all scaled items and qualitative comments. Though virtual, this novel mentoring program promoted faculty feeling valued and connected to the academic setting. The support group demonstrated that successful mentoring relationships improve professional growth, competency, and productivity. In addition, adequate support and guidance for the support group proved to be a key ingredient to success for nursing faculty. Virtual peer mentoring is a valuable resource to faculty for professional growth, development, scholarship and skills. The heightened need for scholarly faculty development and equity in advancement is not unique to nursing and the virtual peer mentorship strategy can be applied to other disciplines.