Perhaps you are new to higher education and beginning your career as a new faculty member, advisor, or administrator. Your days are full, and you may already be engaged in a mentoring process with a senior faculty member. You may be wondering what a formation mentoring community (FMC) has to offer to you.
Or perhaps your position is in administration, and although you might welcome the opportunity to be in an FMC, you might be skeptical about a mentoring community made up of staff and faculty. You might be wondering if there is a place for someone like you.
To answer those legitimate concerns, we offer the following reflections of Darris Means, a young administrator who came to the Elon University group with many of the same kinds of questions and found the following answers:
I was invited to participate in the formation group during the summer of 2010. I was hesitant to join the group when I learned that it would be comprised of all faculty members, and I would be the only staff member participating in the group. I was also hesitant about the time commitment; I was about to embark on my Ph.D. journey part time while working full time at the university. Could I relate to faculty members? Did I have the time to do this formation group? The idea also seemed strange to me. We would meet throughout the academic year and just talk about questions that are important to our lives and work. No agenda, no checklists, no learning objectives, and no major assignments. I had been working in higher education for only three years at the time, and I had never heard of anything like this.
I decided to take a leap of faith and accept the invitation to join the group. As I reflect back on the journey with my formation group, I know that it was one of the best decisions I made in my early career. I began in the group lost and overwhelmed in a noisy world. I was trying to be too many things to too many people, and I had forgotten who I was along the way. I did not give myself the space to contemplate my connectedness with others—family members, colleagues, friends, or students.
Although I was not always the most talkative person in the group, I left each lunch with my formation group reflecting on my journey and how I could be a better advisor, friend, brother, and student without getting lost in a noisy world. The group pointed out ideas I had never considered and provided me with opportunities to consider big questions and ideas.
The most important thing the group gave me was the space to delve deep into a journey of finding my authentic self. I'm by no means done with my journey, but each day I feel less and less overwhelmed by to-do lists, schedules, and the pressure to say yes to everything. I feel like I have more freedom than I did two years ago; I now feel like I have the power and courage to steer my journey to discovering my authentic self.