Professional Development Sessions

1. To identify and explore a range of questions and concerns connected to mentoring and leadership
2. To learn and discuss together participants’ personal or professional experiences in mentoring—positive, negative, challenging (or otherwise)
3. To explore the definitions of mentoring
4. To examine different forms of mentoring (formal and informal, for example) that have been used.
5. To think about specific models of mentoring that could be useful in participants’ work environments
6. To critically evaluate the strengths and limitations of various mentoring approaches and programs
7. To identify specific skills associated with the practice of mentoring.
8. To have opportunities to try out and practice skills in small groups.
9. To identify specific ethical dilemmas in mentoring through case illustration

Shantih Clemans, from Brooklyn, NY, is an associate professor in Human Services at SUNY Empire and the former director of the Center for Mentoring, Learning and Academic Innovation (CMLAI), where she facilitated various professional development workshops, including new faculty orientation, a weekly open mic confidential discussion group, and a year-long institute on mentoring and teaching. With an academic background in social work, Shantih writes about trauma, teaching, mentoring, and group work, among other subjects. She is particularly interested in the fields of vicarious trauma, adult learning, feminist teaching, and group work.

She has presented and published on a range of topics including mentoring and teaching in a world of crisis; race and identity in teaching and mentoring; rape and rape recovery; reflective teaching and adult students, vicarious trauma in the helping professions, and faculty and professional development as civic education, among others.

At the start of the pandemic, Shantih began a series of drawings that illuminated the stress, unpredictability and even the laughs of life at home. Merging her drawings, family letters and photographs, Shantih is at currently at work on a cross genre book on home, teaching, family and memory.

Shantih and Alan are the founding members of a SUNY-wide Open Mic program for new faculty, now finishing its fourth year.

Alan Mandell is SUNY Distinguished Service Professor and College Professor of Adult Learning and Mentoring at SUNY Empire State University. Over more than four decades, he has served as administrator, mentor in the social sciences and director of the university’s Mentoring Institute. Mandell edits the journal, All About Mentoring and co-edits (with Nan Travers) a journal on prior learning assessment, PLA InsideOut. He has authored and co-authored books and essays with Elana Michelson, Lee Herman, Katherine Jelly, Shantih Clemans, and Xenia Coulter, including a volume on John Dewey in the New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education series. Recognition of his work includes the Eugene Sullivan Award for Leadership given by the Adult Higher Education Alliance (2009), the SUNY Chancellor’s award for Excellence in Teaching (2001) and for Professional Services (1991), the Empire State College Foundation Award in Mentoring (2000), and the Susan Turben Chair in Adult Learning and Mentoring (2008-2009). He recently received the Morris Keeton Award by the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL).