On behalf of the team of IMPACT Investigators, thank you for visiting our project introduction. We are excited about this paradigm of deliberately pairing emeriti/retired engineering faculty as a new sector of mentors and advocates for underrepresented minority engineering faculty. The project is still in its formative stages, but we have had a successful trial with a first cohort (i.e., as highlighted in the video).

We look forward to addressing and/or learning from your questions and responses regarding the conceptual or pragmatic points of this new initiative.

 Sincerely,

Comas Haynes

Thank you for producing and making available this video! It's a great idea and the program looks like it has great potential. I'm sure that others will want additional details, as do I, so I'm hoping that you can make available information related to the following issues:

- The sign at the beginning of the video says that the meeting is at Georgia Tech. From looking at that sign, I got the impression that the program was designed for Georgia Tech faculty. However, some of the participants are from other institutions, which then made me think that this is much more national in scope. Could you please clarify this point?

- If the program does involve a consortium of colleges and universities, please provide some indication of the reach of the program at the current time and what you envision its reach to be by the end of the grant period.

- How do you recruit both emeriti and more recent faculty or at least let them know about it? Are you working with professional societies in engineering? What is the process by which emeriti, current faculty, and professional societies can become engaged? Is there any cost to participate? Do participating institutions and organizations have to make any commitments to the newer faculty who participate beyond the costs of getting them to attend these sessions?

I understand that it's still very early in the process, but a major challenge for virtually all externally funded initiatives is how to sustain them once the funding ends. Many successful programs consider this question closer to the beginning rather than at the end of the grant period. What are your current thoughts both about expanding the program over time and sustaining it.

Thank you again for letting visitors to the Showcase know about this very exciting effort!

First, thank you again for investing time to find out more about IMPACT. The project started as a seed trial wherein seven emeriti engineering faculty from Georgia Tech were paired with eleven underrepresented minority (URM) engineering faculty from other institutions in the eastern half of the United States. The only “a priori” constraint was to focus upon Georgia Tech as the source of emeriti faculty, and that was primarily to have more confirmed access to emeriti faculty. There is, however, no geographical or institutional constraint in the present phase of expanding the project; i.e., emeriti and URM faculty participants will be from all over the country.

Project partners include the University of Colorado Colorado Springs and Morehouse as sources of investigator expertise. Regarding networks for increasing the URM and emeriti faculty participants, we are pursuing engineering department heads organizations (e.g., the Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments Heads Association) given the direct channels that departments heads have to URM and emeriti engineering faculty. Additionally, we are pursuing relevant affinity groups such as URM engineering faculty groups (e.g., the Academic and Research Leadership (ARL) Symposium is co-located with the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)) and retired faculty organizations (e.g., the Association of Retirement Organizations in Higher Education (AROHE)) . Ultimately we hope to have a strategic network of organizations that can both inform, advise and advocate the IMPACT initiative.

There is no cost to participate, and --- as the present mode of engagement --- our website (i.e., https://www.uccs.edu/~IMPACT/ ) has a “participate” page/link for interested faculty to submit their information. We covered the travel associated with the first cohort, but, for scaling viability, we are increasing promoting virtual, yet still-effective, arrangements.

Ultimately we believe that our initiative will be a low-cost means of faculty connecting in mutually beneficial manner to promote URM faculty success and expand outlets for continued contributions by retired faculty. Increasingly external funding is being used to initiate and improve, via researched insights,  platforms that are sustainable primarily via participants’ interests.  

Thank you for sharing your project. I would like to know how you plan to measure impact on early career faculty participants and track for follow up?

Great question! The early career faculty member will identify a goal (or goals) in which an emeritus faculty member could support them in attaining, perhaps they are going up for tenure and need to secure names for external letter writers, the emeritus faculty mentor could share their network and suggest possible names. Thus, the measurement of impact will occur on a one-to-one basis of the individual mentoring needs of the early career faculty mentees. We will conduct interviews and administer surveys with all participants to understand the effectiveness of matching around specific goals, as well as the efficacy of the mentoring relationships. 

What a great mentorship model! This idea has the potential to have a positive impact on so many. Do you have any ideas for how other programs can implement this program? What have been some of the major challenges you have encountered? 

Hi Comas, 

Of course, you know I think IMPACT is a great project that needs to continue. Especially since we have a link with one of your participants! 

Hi Comas,

I am proud to represent the IMPACT program as part of the first cohort. From a participant's standpoint I believe the mentoring approach of pairing URM engineering faculty with emeriti engineering faculty was successful.

Thanks Terri,

You and your advocate have been an excellent example of what we’re trying to foster via IMPACT. ! Thanks also for continuing to spread the word about IMPACT.

“Speaking of ‘impact’,”I look forward to hearing and seeing continued successes in your new leadership role. J