New faculty mentoring

Regional mentor
Mentoring is an important part of your orientation to University of Missouri Extension. Your regional director will appoint a colleague within your region or nearby to help you learn the ropes and to provide the support necessary for you to succeed. You will meet with your mentor within the first couple of weeks of your employment and hopefully maintain an ongoing relationship with that person. Use that person to ask any questions about the job and to learn about the complexities of the MU Extension processes and systems.

If, for some reason, your mentoring relationship does not work out, please contact your regional director or the orientation coordinator. After a few weeks on the job, you may have identified another person whom you relate to better. It is possible, upon request, to assign another mentor.

Program coach(es)
Programming is central to your role as an MU Extension specialist in the field. Therefore, part of your orientation will center around training with other specialists who have similar program responsibilities as yours. Your regional director will identify the co-workers whom you will schedule to visit in their offices. These visits will provide an opportunity for you to see a co-worker in action, to learn how they develop programs, how they interact with clientele, and to share ideas for educational materials, marketing, evaluation, etc. Be sure to make your visit armed with questions about how someone else does a job similar to yours.

State specialist mentor
Your regional director and program leader will identify a state specialist to mentor you from the academic department on campus. Meeting with your state specialist mentor will give you an opportunity to learn about statewide programs, educational material available to support your efforts in the field and campus resources to assist you in your programming. This person can be invaluable in helping you to get off to a good start.

Next: your support team