by the NORDP Mentoring Committee
The traditional mentoring dyad (1:1 mentor-mentee) program has been a NORDP member feature since 2012. The Cohort Mentoring Group, piloted in July 2022, consists of matching three mentees with similar interests with one shared mentor. Both the dyad and cohorts are matched based on the WisdomShare matching algorithm. This is a reflection of one of the traditional mentoring dyads from the 2020-2021 mentoring year.
Mentor Angela Jordan, University of South Alabama • Angela is the Director of Research Development at the University of South Alabama and is responsible for strategic, catalytic, and capacity-building activities designed to promote faculty development and enhance their ability to attract external funding. With a background in the social sciences and humanities, Angela brings an interdisciplinary perspective that is informed by the principles of collaboration and community engagement. She has been the Co-Chair of the Mentoring Committee since 2023, actively engaging NORDP members to support mentoring for research development professionals.
Mentee Wendi Chiarbos Jensen, University of Nebraska Medical Center • Wendi is the Director of Research and Grants Development in the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Wendi provides all proposal development support, works on strategic endeavors, and helps promote research across the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Her experience in working in an institutional-level office as well as a busy academic unit has helped her understand the value that external funding plays in research progress, creative discovery, and educational programming. Wendi participates in NORDP’s Academic Medicine/Affiliate Medical Center Affinity Group and is part of the NORDP Region V: Midwest/Mountain.
Q1: What influenced you to apply to be a mentor and a mentee for the 2020-21 NORDP Mentoring Program?
Angela: 2020 was my fourth year participating in the matched mentoring program, and my third year as a mentor. While I originally joined the program in 2016 because I thought I would benefit from mentoring, with some encouragement I leaped into being a mentor myself, and I found it rewarding. By that point, I knew that every mentoring relationship is unique and was looking forward to another year of being on that journey with some more NORDP members as we worked through problems and thought about goals, whatever shape that would take. Of course that was also the first COVID year, which gave us some additional challenges to talk about!
Wendi: I was hired for a new position in my college so I did not have others doing the same RD work as I did. The NORDP Mentoring Program allowed me the chance for collegiality when there were no other co-workers at my job site. I had hoped to find a good resource for discussion of my professional goals and challenges. The Program did this by matching me with Angela Jordan!
Q2: What is your favorite part about your relationship?
Angela: Wendi was really great, very grounded, and open to the self-reflection process that is essential for growth. Like many new to research development, she brought invaluable experience and transferable skills from previous jobs, and she was very motivated. Every mentee is different and has different types of goals; Wendi had some very specific things she wanted to work on, which was fun for me.
Wendi: It’s reassuring to connect with another RD professional who can relate to my experiences and help me process any issues I am having. Angela’s insights into how to navigate situations I was encountering always included helpful and concrete approaches she had used. And I appreciated her calm delivery and approach to work.
Q3: How has participation in the Mentoring Program helped broaden your horizons about Research Development in general and/or affected your daily work in particular?
Angela: Being involved in the mentoring program has reinforced my understanding of what great people we have in NORDP. People bring diverse backgrounds and face unique challenges in their jobs and careers, yet at the same time, so many of us share characteristics like having a growth mindset and being very open to sharing experiences, tools, and tricks of the trade. In some professional contexts, the knowledge economy is built on scarcity and controlled access, but in our profession, we have a knowledge economy built on abundance, and it has benefitted my professional growth tremendously. It also informs my thinking about the importance of mentoring in other contexts, such as for faculty and staff development, as well as its use as a component in proposals.
Wendi: I enjoyed our regular discussions about what was going on in our campus and unit environments. Hearing my mentor’s perspective on the RD field was also beneficial as I considered my own workload and how to manage time.
Q4: What surprised you about being a mentor or a mentee?
Angela: To be honest I spent much of my life with an antiestablishment mindset, and would have resisted thinking of myself as a mentor. I didn’t have great mentors as an undergraduate or during my first stint in graduate school, but also wasn’t primed to be a good mentee either. By the time I joined NORDP, I was much more receptive to the idea that being a mentor or mentee did not need to fit into a narrowly defined box and could be a really beneficial opportunity for growth in either role. After having positive mentoring experiences within NORDP, I know that the roles are adaptable to the unique context and needs of each relationship. Although both roles are essential, mentorship is really about the mentee, and in the NORDP context should be driven by the mentee; the mentor can be thought of as a facilitator for mentee exploration and development.
Wendi: I have benefitted from tremendously skilled mentors going back to my undergraduate student days. Early in my career, I may not have realized that i sought mentoring but certainly recognized its impact after the fact. With the NORDP partnering, Angela and I were able to forge a relationship through regular initial meetings and then maintained it by spacing out our meetings a bit. This worked well for me and I hope for Angela. I was surprised how quickly I felt a connection with her.
Q5: What made you decide to maintain a longer-term mentoring relationship and how has it impacted you?
Angela: One thing that came out organically over the course of the year is that, partly in conversation with me about the PhD I was working on at the time, but largely because of Wendi’s work with faculty in her college, she came to realize that she had the capacity and desire to do research herself, which led her to enroll in a PhD program. We’ve kept in touch and I am excited to see her continuing down that path!
Wendi: I was hopeful that we would have a good personal connection, but there are no guarantees that people doing the same kind of work will necessarily like each other. I found Angela to be approachable about not just work but also her personal experiences. We were of similar age and family situations but had followed different career paths. I appreciated the personal commonalities we discovered and how they impacted our professional lives.
Q6: Any words of wisdom or encouragement for those wanting to apply next year? Any other thoughts you would like to share?
Angela: I know that taking the leap to be a mentor can intimidate people if they’ve never been in that role; it’s really easy to talk yourself out of doing it by thinking you don’t have enough experience or the right experience, or that you don’t fit what you imagine a mentor should be. But if someone is considering it then chances are that they do have something to offer, and even if they’re junior in the profession I guarantee that we always have people who are brand new to the field who can benefit from their mentorship.
Another challenge is that, because every relationship is different, someone’s first experience as a mentor might not be exactly what they had imagined. At that point, it’s easy to think ‘mentoring isn’t for me.’ However, I’d encourage people who’ve had that thought to try it again, because they may find that the next time around it’s a truly rewarding experience.
Wendi: I have subsequently served as a mentor every year since my mentee experience with Angela. NORDP provides a great service through this program and has helped me connect with colleagues all over the US. My advice is the same given to all of my mentees: continue participating in this program and serve as both mentor and mentee. The 360-degree perspective these roles provide will enhance your professional capacity and enrich your personal attributes.
Applications for the 2025-2026 mentoring match cycle will open in the spring — keep an eye out for NORDP announcements. Additional mentoring opportunities are available through the Peer Mentoring Groups that are open for participation throughout the year via the WisdomShare platform [LINK: https://nordpmentoring.mywisdomshare.com/]. Contact the NORDP Mentoring Committee if you have any questions [link: mentoringprogram@nordp.org].
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