Mentoring Program Subcommittee Meeting Minutes, 08/2016

SAA Mentoring Program Subcommittee Meeting Minutes

Hilton, Atlanta, GA, August 3, 2016  / 2:30 pm

Attended: Co-chairs Gabrielle Spiers & Michael Zaidman with members Jeremy Brett, Dean DeBolt, Michelle Ganz and Membership Chair, Kate Dundon.

Agenda & Minutes

A. Report to the Membership Committee.  Zaidman mentioned this report was presented at the membership meeting on August 2^nd.

  After members reviewed the report, one of the concerns is the geographic requirement.  As a group, we decided to eliminate this question as an option on the application since most of the mentoring is done via e-mail and it doesn’t really matter where one lives.

  Another concern was the high number of protégés that have not been matched.  As the committee members are all mentors already, we would not mind taking on additional protégés and we feel that more mentors in the profession would have some extra time to handle additional applicants.  So, we would like to add a question on the application for mentors, if they are willing to handle at least two protégés at the same time or within the same year?  This should help match all protégés in the waiting pool.

B. New committee members include: Janet DeVries, Dean DeBolt, Michelle Ganz and Jamie Martin.  Current member, Devhra BennettJones has been promoted to co-chair.

The Mentoring Subcommittee listserv access request will be forwarded to Felicia Owens at SAA on Monday after the meeting.  Google privileges will also be granted to access database, instructions and forms.  Zaidman's timeline of activities will also be sent to co-chairs for guidance of what is needed throughout the year.

C. 2016 Mentoring Program survey results.  See attachment.

D. Electronic Records Committee (ERS) Mentoring Program 2015 initiative.  It was decided since the Navigator program already exists, this will just duplicate the effort.  Therefore they will contact the Navigator chair to try and arrange a mentor relationship with applicants interested in ERS.

E. Observations & Questions.

  One idea is to have a recognition program to recognize mentors that have served multiple times.  From the report to the membership committee, we noticed that two mentors had served seven times and two more had served six times.  Since all the mentors are volunteers, they should be called out perhaps during an annual meeting for their continuing cooperation.

Perhaps a certificate could be created and mailed out signed by the SAA President and Membership Chair or presented at a function in the future.

Another idea to reach more participants was to reach out to area graduate programs and let them know of this service.

Meeting adjourned at 3:05 pm.  Minutes by Zaidman.