Discover how one university created a scalable, centralized mentoring hub to better support online faculty across various degree levels. This session will discuss the core design, the lessons learned, and how other institutions can adapt this approach using existing tools to enhance engagement, coaching, and development.

Online universities often face challenges supporting faculty, especially those in mentoring roles, due to dispersed resources, unclear expectations, and a lack of scalable infrastructure. This session explores a practical, replicable model for centralized mentoring support developed through the Institute for Faculty Mentoring Excellence (IFME), initially built to serve doctoral faculty while slowly expanding across all degree levels.

This Education Session will highlight the creative process of designing and scaling IFME using readily available institutional tools, such as SharePoint and Microsoft Teams, while navigating their design limitations. The platform was developed in close collaboration with faculty, program liaisons, and leaders to address critical mentoring challenges commonly faced in online and distributed learning environments:

1. Dispersed resources that make support hard to find
2. Faculty isolation in virtual environments
3. Uncertainty about where to seek mentoring, and vulnerability in asking for help
4. Burnout and disengagement among faculty

To respond to these challenges, the IFME model is grounded in six strategic pillars that shape its structure and long-term vision:

• Align university-wide mentoring initiatives for consistency and clarity
• Support an elite, enriching faculty experience
• Create a sense of belonging among dispersed online faculty
• Advance professional growth and faculty development
• Empower faculty to lead their own development journey
• Foster thought leadership in mentoring and online pedagogy

Attendees will walk through the IFME platform design and see real examples of how coaching, curated content, and community are integrated. They’ll also hear lessons learned from implementation, including faculty feedback loops, usability insights, and expansion strategies.

Engagement Plan:

This interactive session will include:

• A guided walkthrough of IFME’s structure (via visuals or mockups) showing how the six goals show up in practice
• A structured reflection activity prompting attendees to identify gaps in their own faculty mentoring infrastructure. For example, “Where do mentoring gaps exist in your institution’s support ecosystem?”
• Small group discussion: What would it take to build a mentoring hub in your institution? Where do mentoring gaps exist, and how might you begin to close them?

Key Takeaways:

By the end of the session, attendees will be able to:

• Identify common structural and cultural barriers that affect faculty mentoring
• Map mentoring challenges at their own institution to corresponding strategic goals
• Leverage common institutional tools (like SharePoint or Teams) to build scalable support models
• Understand how faculty input and collaboration can drive sustainable mentoring design

This session is ideal for academic leaders, faculty developers, instructional designers, and program coordinators interested in building or refining scalable mentoring infrastructure in online environments.

Kristi Trapp, PhD

Associate Dean at Walden University

Deborah Inman, PhD

Director at Walden University

Deb Mattoso, M.S.

Instructional Designer at Walden University