By David Widmer and Christina Howard
NORDP Board Member Etta Ward’s commitment to and passion for mentoring extends beyond NORDP, and she has been internationally recognized for her mentoring efforts and ideas. As the assistant 
vice chancellor for research development in the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, Etta assisted in developing IUPUI’s first formal staff mentoring program, along with the EMPOWER program for tenure-track faculty, both of which have been successful and well-received. Etta has also helped develop a mentoring toolkit for the NORDP Mentoring Program and serves both on the Mentoring Committee and as Co-Chair for the Committee on Inclusive Excellence.
Etta traveled to France and Belgium in October 2018 as part of the prestigious Fulbright International Education Administrators Program. IUPUI published an article, “IUPUI leader attends Fulbright program, receives invitation to speak to Fulbright staff,” detailing her experiences. Here are a few highlights*:
Ward and 11 other American university administrators met with representatives of several universities, programs, and institutions during their Oct. 5-20, 2018, visits to Montpellier, Paris, and Brussels. One of Etta’s primary goals was to better understand how research is supported in universities abroad.
The Fulbright program also gave her an opportunity to talk with international administrators about one of her biggest passions–mentoring. “I wanted to get a broader and global perspective of what mentoring means for other universities, particularly in France,” Ward explained. “Mentoring is near and dear to my heart, more specifically, mentoring as a strategy to support women and minority faculty in higher education.”
During the program, Ward’s mentoring successes caught the attention of Fulbright staff members, and Etta was invited to the December 5th Fulbright Commission Staff Workshop in Washington, DC, to speak to Fulbright employees from across the globe about how best to use mentoring methods to ensure the success of minority students participating in a Fulbright exchange.
In February, Etta was invited to be the keynote speaker at the Indiana Chapter of the Fulbright Association’s Winter Banquet. At the banquet, several visiting Fulbright scholars asked how they might begin to build a mentoring culture at their home institutions, using some of the strategies Etta presented in her talk.
Since her Fulbright, Etta has also been invited to be one of three reviewers to select the next cohort for the International Education Administrators Program in France and Belgium.
Interested in how you can #PayItForward and bring mentoring-related ideas home to your institution? Check out the recent NORDP blog post about all of the opportunities and resources available for mentors and mentees at the upcoming Annual Conference!
*Article highlights compiled by David Widmer. For the full IUPUI article, click here: https://news.iu.edu/stories/2018/12/iupui/inside/12-iupui-leader-etta-ward-fulbright-global-mentoring.htm
_______________
Follow @NORDP_official on Twitter for all the latest #NORDP2019 updates.
NORDP fosters a culture of inclusive excellence by actively promoting and supporting diversity, inclusion and equity in all its forms to expand our worldview, enrich our work, and elevate our profession.
NORDP News 