Having a network of support throughout your career is key to success and sustainability. As faculty, you may have been assigned a mentor—or matched with one through a formal mentoring program. With this in mind, you may need to ask for mentoring support from other faculty, staff, or professionals you know in order to enhance one particular area of your work. These relationships can often be short-term and centered around a specific need. Making that “ask” of someone clearly and concisely will help potential mentors to match themselves with your needs and understand the time commitment you are asking for.  

Join us for a discussion on how to “make the ask” of a potential mentor in order to develop a mentoring network for yourself. Drawing from Katharine Stewart’s work in The Consultative Approach to Mentoring: Building a Network of Support, we will:  

• Briefly discuss the need for short-term mentorship in your faculty career.  
• Work through an activity on identifying your mentoring network needs and begin to think about who might fill those roles. 
• Watch a short clip on how to “make the ask” of someone once you’ve identified a potential short-term mentor.  

• Practice writing a script for “making the ask” of a potential mentor you’ve specifically identified. 

You will leave the discussion with a sense of who you may need to reach out to for short-term mentorship, along with some valuable strategies to use to reach out to them.