Mentorship Efforts to Support Part-time Social Work Faculty Members

Social work faculty experience increasing demands to develop and maintain a research portfolio that includes external funding and publications. Given the increase in research expectations, more part-time instructors are needed to teach courses. In addition to the literature review, we briefly describe a pilot part-time faculty mentorship project developed by our school to build a strong, connected, and consistent part-time faculty team. However, we also wanted to examine mentorship programs at other schools/departments of social work; as a result, we conducted an exploratory research study with social work deans and directors nationwide. Findings suggested that while schools of social work are more likely to employ greater numbers of faculty overall, departments tend to have higher teaching expectations for full-time tenure-track faculty. Despite variability among responses, most schools and departments provide some form of support to part-time faculty members; a lack of resources was given as the primary reason for limited mentorship activities.