ATA New Faculty Mentoring Program FAQ

Under the New Faculty Mentor Program a tenured faculty member will be paired with one or two new faculty to help them develop into good tax teachers by aiding them in understanding more complex tax issues and how to teach those issues to both undergraduate and graduate students.

New tax faculty are under greater pressure to be both productive in the research area and the teaching area within a relatively short period of time. This pressure comes from the increased research requirements at many schools and the addition of more graduate tax courses at schools that are adding a fifth year or a master's degree to comply with the 150-hour requirement from the AICPA. Many new faculty are not able to teach more advanced tax topics right after graduate school and may not have experienced tax faculty at their own school to help. For this reason, the New Faculty Concerns Committee would like to set up a New Faculty Mentoring program. The new mentor program is different from the current Teaching Consultants program in that it is designed to have more one on one interaction between the mentor and the new faculty member. The main purpose of this program is to meet the needs of the new faculty member to develop the skills necessary to become successful in their career.

Tenured faculty who have experience in specific tax areas.

A mentor will have at most two new faculty at any one time. We do not want to overburden the mentor's time. We also want the mentor and new faculty to develop a good working relationship. The Committee feels that the mentor should only work with two junior faculty at one time to accomplish the goals of the program.

The mentor will provide guidance to the junior faculty with regard to difficult tax topics and how to relate those issues in the classroom. This guidance could come in the form of course syllabi, course notes and problems, development of class cases and tests, notification of new developments in the area (such as new regulations or important court cases), sharing of practical experience in the field, and answering questions the junior faculty member might have.

New faculty who have completed their Ph.D., DBA or LLM and have been teaching for less than three years.

Tenured faculty will be asked to sign up to be mentors. A listing of the names of mentors and the tax areas they work in will be kept by the New Faculty Concerns Committee and will be listed on the ATA homepage. Junior faculty who would like to have a mentor will request one through the New Faculty Concerns Committee who will notify the mentor. The new faculty can make a generic request for a mentor in a certain area or request a specific mentor from the list on the homepage. The Chairman of the New Faculty Concerns Committee will pass the request along to the mentor who will contact the new faculty member. We believe the first move needs to be made by the mentor for this program to be successful, because some new faculty may not feel comfortable contacting a tenured tax professor at a different school for help.

For more information please contact:

Timothy J. Rupert
Accounting Group
College of Business Administration
404 Hayden Hall
Northeastern University
Boston, MA 02115-5000
Phone: 617-373-5165
Fax: 617-373-8814
Email: trupert@cba.neu.edu