A few years ago, the Reich College of Education (RCOE) at Appalachian State University developed and implemented a developmental community model of faculty support (Smith & Spooner, 2021). The purpose of the Developmental Community program is to support faculty at all career levels in establishing and maintaining healthy, productive, and meaningful careers. The design of the model began with the appointment of a faculty fellow who received one course release per semester to research, develop, and implement a college-wide mentoring model.

One of our RCOE Developmental Community program principles asserts that a developmental community model is associated with organizational benefits such as retention of faculty, job satisfaction, leadership development, organizational commitment, more learning, and an overall sense of optimism (Smith & Spooner, 2021; see also Dobrow et al., 2012). Professors who understand the expectations of their various roles enjoy their jobs more than those who struggle with understanding or fulfilling their responsibilities (Robison, 2013). If we want to realize these organizational benefits, we must commit time and attention to their development.

As the effort to support faculty continued to grow, the lone faculty fellow began envisioning ways that RCOE could expand the capacity of the Developmental Community program to provide more support to faculty. With the goal of making mentoring and mutual development more a part of the culture of the college and to increase mentoring capacity and depth, the fellow proposed the creation of the RCOE Mentoring Guild. A guild is an association of artisans that oversee the practice of their craft in a particular area. Guilds are often associated with the idea of a respected set of skilled craftspeople (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild). In our college, we strive for a culture of support and collegiality—an ideal that was further supported by our dean, and other members of the college leadership team, when they endorsed the Mentoring Guild proposal. In alignment with this culture, the Mentoring Guild acknowledges that mentoring is a craft that we can cultivate together and that learning to support faculty is a worthy and critical skill, not a superfluous embellishment to the health of our collective faculty. Establishing a guild composed of representatives from academic departments across RCOE provides a way to build mentoring capacity and foster professional relationships. Guild members can provide support to faculty (especially newer faculty) as well as to one another (as a mid-career community).

The faculty fellow’s vision for the Mentoring Guild was of a diverse group, ideally composed of at least one representative from each department, that would meet regularly with the RCOE Faculty Fellow to envision practices that could expand support to faculty at all career levels in our college. Guild members could serve as mentors and non-evaluative supports as well as communication liaisons to faculty in each department. The ideologies that guide both the developmental community model and the Mentoring Guild prioritize the collective value and expertise of the members of the organization over the hierarchies that have historically served more as barriers than invitations in higher education recruitment, hiring, and retention of faculty. The proposed guild is highlighted in the program activity, inputs, outputs, outcomes, and evidences sections of the developmental community model’s program theory and logic model (Appendix A). Creating the guild was a Developmental Community activity in the past year; our Mentoring Guild members became resources (inputs) for our program and faculty. We worked to develop activities to meet our stated outcomes. The developmental community model and Mentoring Guild are intended to benefit not only individuals within the community but also the organization as a community. Rather than serving as gatekeepers, the faculty in the guild are waymakers, supporting and celebrating the success of each faculty member and the faculty collective.

Our implementation of the guild model is informed by Rogers’s (2003) diffusion of innovations (DOI) theory, which has been used as a framework in disciplines such as political science, public health, communications, history, economics, technology, and education (Dooley, 1999). The four elements of the diffusion of innovations model are innovation, communication channels, time, and a social system. These elements make the theory particularly applicable for developing a new approach to community development and mentoring. Diffusion, as defined by Rogers (2003), is “the process in which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system” (p. 5). Rogers explains further that diffusion is a special type of communication, typically about a new idea, and characterized as interactive rather than linear. Diffusion implies uncertainty, including a probable lack of predictability, structure, and information. Diffusion can create social change or alterations in the structure and function of a system. Building on the DOI theory, Kempe et al. (2005) studied the problem of maximizing the expected spread of an innovation within a social network and developed a general model of influence propagation. Central to their model is the identification of individuals (called nodes in their model) who serve as initial innovators and who make recommendations that contribute to a cascade model of diffusion.

The DOI theory has two tiers of application in the guild model described here. The scope of the first tier is at the college level and involves the development of the initial RCOE Developmental Community program and Mentoring Guild as the innovations. Essential to this tier is an effort to identify key influencers (nodes) within the various departments of the college (social system). The second tier engages what Kempe et al. (2005) called contagion, or the spreading of innovation beyond the initial adopters. Within their respective units, the mentors explore potential needs and responsive programming and communicate those to guild colleagues, the faculty fellow for mentoring, and other members of the college leadership team in ways that make sense to them given their department’s particular contexts.

In keeping with Rogers’s (2003) view of communication, we foster a network of interactions that invites “mutual understandings” among those within the same academic unit as well as the collective understandings of the guild members. Embedded in their departments, guild members represent and support their peers by developing programming to meet their particular needs. In addition, the guild members’ interactions with unit peers and one another could inform the college leadership, university center for teaching and learning (CTL), and other service units within the institution about the needs of faculty.

Kezar and Lester (2009) provided characteristics for grassroots faculty leaders, and these characteristics provide guidance as desirable characteristics of mentoring guild members: interest in organizational citizenship; skills in vision implementation, from planning to negotiation; ability to influence other colleagues and to be persuasive; political skills to help navigate resistance, if it emerges; and interest in creating a network of like-minded colleagues. McDonald et al. (2016) offer several categories for entry-level educational developers grouped into foundational characteristics, knowledge, and skills developed in the learning process.

Guild members should have a history of investment in mentoring or, lacking experience, enthusiasm for the role. The mentor should have credibility with the faculty as well as respect and support from administration. Credibility can be defined in many ways, such as recognition of excellence in teaching or interest and experience with faculty development or mentoring—or in some departments, longevity or faculty rank. In some contexts, some faculty would not have an opportunity to serve as guild members while untenured, whereas in others tenure status would not matter. In our college, we determined that members of the guild should have gone through a successful third-year review but tenure was not necessary.

Guild members may be selected by the departmental faculty or the department chair, in consultation with the dean. When possible, guild members should self-identify and be selected based on their interest and previous involvement in mentoring or faculty development. Our process through two cycles has been to honor the spirit of inclusivity and waymaking by sending a call for letters of interest and asking individuals who are interested to submit letters to the faculty fellow, routed through their department chairs. We do not limit membership in our guild to one representative per department. Rather, at this time, we have been happy to welcome those who have expressed sincere interest. In response to the first call, applicants defined their interest in ways that indicated multiple perspectives on mentoring and diverse reasons for their desire to participate. These included (1) having felt isolated as part of a helpful but geographically distant department faculty, most of whom taught 100% online and did not need to be in the building; (2) having felt supported as a junior faculty and wanting to make sure other new faculty had the same opportunity for that experience; and (3) having not felt supported as a junior faculty member and wanting others to feel supported. In our first year, we had six Mentoring Guild members representing all five of our academic departments, though one retired after the first semester. All members identified as women; one member identified as a woman of color.

In the second invitation cycle, we added a specific and frequent meeting time and calendar to the call so that those applying would know the expectation and so that finding a mutual time would not prohibit the group from moving forward together. The second round of applicants, who joined the Mentoring Guild in Fall 2022, added to the diversity of the group not only demographically but also in the unique perspectives they bring to discussions and activities, which they cited in their letters of interest. Three faculty joined the Mentoring Guild in the second year, representing two different departments. This brings our guild membership to seven plus our faculty fellow at the time of writing. All guild members identify as women; four (50%) identify as White, and three (37.5%) are faculty of color. Guild membership includes assistant, associate, and full professors with a range of experience in higher education from five to 22 years. According to our institutional research data, the tenure-track faculty in RCOE are 70.5% women, and 15.1% identify as underrepresented (defined as non-White races/ethnicities).

During the development of the Mentoring Guild and the call for interest in participating, the faculty fellow drafted sample tasks that guild members might do. We include our most recent call for interest as Appendix B to help readers who may want to create their own call for interest.

Moving from a program theory and logic model to establishing a mentoring guild marks the beginning of what we hope will be a cultural change within our institution to relinquish our guard on the wrong tower and shift our efforts toward building a developmental community of support. Though large-scale changes in higher education structures and systems may take years to realize, we acknowledge the importance of documenting our early efforts as a portion of a staged evaluation of the evolution of our work. Furthermore, we lean into the four-part lens recommended for evaluating developmental work that was developed to reflect dimensions of the purposes of higher education institutions (POD Network, 2018). This four-part lens categorizes the functions of higher education using the metaphors hub, incubator, temple, and sieve. Specifically, we see the work of the Mentoring Guild within RCOE acting as a hub, incubator, and temple. As a hub, or similar to what Johnson (2016) characterized as the exosphere level of constellation mentoring, the Mentoring Guild is a central group that works in the college collaboratively. Guild members bring programming information to their departments and also relay faculty issues to the Mentoring Guild to inform programming and practices. As incubator, the Mentoring Guild is focused on implementing programs and events that support the development of faculty toward their goals, build connections across faculty in support of their work, and create a sense of belonging in the college. The Mentoring Guild in the role of temple serves as an institutionalized group providing legitimacy and importance to the work of mentoring and as a place where faculty can seek support. The remaining role of the sieve, as a group that vets or distills knowledge, is shared with our campus CTL, Office of Research, Library, and other units at the university.

These lenses of hub, incubator, and temple are all roles with which the Mentoring Guild approached our work. As we look at short-term (one year) indicators to evaluate our progress, we focus in the following section on descriptions of the activities and initiatives we implemented or started in our first year (POD Network, 2018). In addition, we offer our early insights on the strengths, challenges, and outcomes of each initiative in Appendix C. We hope these details might help other organizations or institutions that are considering a similar model of faculty support.

Meetings. The Mentoring Guild began meeting once a month in August 2021 for approximately 90 minutes. It quickly became apparent that the volume of business at each meeting was going to be overwhelming and that more frequent meetings would be necessary. Though not possible during the 2021–2022 academic year, the Mentoring Guild planned to meet every other week during 2022–2023 and to alternate modalities (i.e., alternating between face-to-face and virtual meetings) to accommodate members’ schedules, teaching, and supervision responsibilities. This shift requires members, both existing and new, to commit in advance to the work of the Mentoring Guild and agree to meet more frequently.

Reading. In Fall 2021, the RCOE purchased two books for the members of the Mentoring Guild: The Elements of Mentoring by W. Brad Johnson and Charles R. Ridley (2018) and The Mentor’s Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships by Lois J. Zachary (2016). Additionally, each member of the Mentoring Guild also has a copy of The Peak Performing Professor by Susan Robison (2013). We are, in essence, carefully curating a small library of resources for each guild member, the purpose being to enable us to delve deeply into the kind of literature that will best inform our practice of mentorship and allow us to best serve our peers in RCOE. We have used concepts and tools from The Peak Performing Professor in our mentoring work with early and mid-career faculty. In the spring, once our new faculty have had a semester of teaching, we will lead some book discussions with them.

In late Spring 2022, the Mentoring Guild began reading and discussing The Elements of Mentoring (Johnson & Ridley, 2018), pulling from its pages advice and wisdom pertinent to our unique situation as a group of mentors rather than as individual mentors. Specifically, we chose to focus on reading the sections “What Excellent Mentors Do: Matters of Skill,” “Traits of Excellent Mentors: Matters of Style and Presence,” and “Celebrating Diversity: Matters of Human Differences” and the chapter “Foster Mentoring Constellations.” Reading through this material sparked conversations that reinforced our commitments to making processes more transparent for faculty (such as annual review expectations), seeking out more opportunities for affirmations and celebrations of faculty work, acknowledging faculty as whole people, and mentoring mutually. Finally, we also used our reading of these sections when drafting our call for guild members for the 2022–2023 academic year.

Our faculty have previously been involved in institutional writing retreats, and the faculty fellow facilitated a college-level retreat that had a lot of traction in the year before the establishment of the Mentoring Guild. Our guild members recognized an opportunity to create a space for faculty and doctoral students to write in the presence of others. A college-wide retreat invites participants to establish research connections among their near peers. In addition, doctoral students benefit from learning about the research interests among our faculty. In a survey sent to faculty about writing-specific needs, many asked for accountability, designated times and places, and camaraderie. The resulting idea is a weeklong writing retreat that occurs at the end of the fall and spring semesters. Since writing groups can help scholars reinforce their writing schedules, make writing less solitary, and encourage them to move away from binge writing (Silvia, 2019), writing retreats meet an important need in our community.

To meet the needs of the RCOE community, these writing retreats have been held in various formats (i.e., face-to-face, virtual, and hybrid) and follow a similar structure. On the morning of the first day, we introduce everyone in the group, set group expectations, and vocalize our goals for the week. Each afternoon, everyone regroups and states their accomplishments for the day.

Throughout the day, attendees are encouraged to complete writing-specific activities such as meeting with co-authors, visiting the library, or speaking with other university personnel that can help them with their writing process. For the remainder of the week, the format remains consistent, with a guild member leading the opening and closing. For example, during the morning check-in, members of the guild lead warm-up activities that have included tips for developing good writing habits, strategies for organizing research and resources, and arts-based activities such as mind mapping or visual reflections.

These writing retreats have been well received by all attendees. Specifically, one participant wrote in their end-of-retreat survey, “Could we do this in the middle of a semester? I know it would be difficult to juggle everything plus teaching responsibilities, but I would love to not

have to wait until we have a break (end of the semester) to be part of something so beneficial.” This, and spoken comments like it, prompted the Mentoring Guild to pilot a more consistent writing opportunity we coined Work/Write/Read (WWR). The idea that the accountability afforded by participation in a writing group, workshop, or retreat is beneficial is well documented (Bodenberg & Nichols, 2019; Harvey et al., 2020; Kensington-Miller & Carter, 2019; Kulage & Larson, 2016; Ratkovic´ et al., 2019; Scott et al., 2019; Voegele & Stevens, 2017). Participants also mentioned that they would be interested in continuing to meet for shorter stints of time throughout the semester. The Mentoring Guild wanted to provide that space and accountability but did not want to limit the type of productivity just to writing, and so WWR was born. Every week on Wednesday or Thursday, one member of the Mentoring Guild provided a virtual space for faculty to meet for two hours to engage in one or more of those activities. Two hours were set aside for each meeting, and participants checked in at both the beginning and end of that time. Additionally, participants tracked their work on a spreadsheet designed with a simple drop-down menu for them to choose work, write, or read as well as space for their name and a brief description of their activity for the session. Those who participated were appreciative of the shared space and opportunity to focus on important tasks with accountability.

People who feel supported and valued in their jobs are more likely to be engaged, motivated, and satisfied in their work (American Psychological Association, 2012). While awards and monetary rewards are an appreciated gesture, these types of recognitions reward only a select few and are dependent on the availability of funds (Akafo & Boateng, 2015). Research on the role of recognition and job satisfaction in academia shows that acknowledging faculty achievement for smaller accomplishments is often more appreciated (Benito & Scott-Milligan, 2018). Faculty report that their colleagues’ perceptions of their achievements are meaningful (Ssesanga & Garrett, 2005) and feel that peer-level recognition is more important to their job satisfaction than being recognized by their department chair (Bozeman & Gaughan, 2011; Sahl, 2017). However, the type and amount of recognition needed for job satisfaction is highly dependent on the gender, race/ethnicity, and career level of the faculty member (Sahl, 2017). Our Mentoring Guild, therefore, has contemplated how we can celebrate the achievements of our faculty members in a variety of ways while fostering a culture that values honoring and congratulating others. We have implemented some initiatives in our first year and have begun planning for others, both of which we will discuss below.

In their book, The Power of Moments, Chip Heath and Dan Heath (2017) describe a typical first day at a new place of employment, one in which an employee arrives without any welcoming fanfare, guided by a helpful administrative assistant to an empty office (usually without a computer). “The lack of attention paid to an employee’s first day is mind-boggling,” they assert, and is “a wasted opportunity to make a new team member feel included and appreciated” (p. 18). The authors contend that organizations are often consumed by goals and suggest that we should be more interested in creating “defining moments,” times and occasions that are worthy of investment. In an effort to create a positive first impression and experience, our guild organized a special day of welcome.

The first RCOE Welcome Day was co-hosted by members of our Mentoring Guild and key staff that will support faculty during their first year and beyond. The day began as faculty approached their offices, some seeing the space for the first time. Their doors were decorated with signs made by guild members and kindergarten children. Instead of an empty space, faculty found a gift “swag bag” of RCOE branded items (e.g., insulated cup, lanyard, notepad, pens, clear stadium bag, stickers, seeds for local flowers, university pendant). The day’s events included a Q&A session with our Mentoring Guild, a tour of buildings and centers (e.g., College of Education building, Media Lab, Dean’s Suite), and meetings with key people (e.g., information technology [IT], CTL, and administrative support specialists). Meeting with key people before the semester began gave new faculty knowledge about day-to-day processes for the college and specific departments that were not covered in the main university orientation. Tasks as simple as making copies, using zone printers, or submitting an IT support ticket can take time with new systems. The culminating experience of the day included a social gathering at a local ice cream and coffee shop next door to our building.

Though our faculty may arrive for their official first day on different days, we scheduled a welcome so that they could meet one another and begin to make connections within our college community. We wanted them to leave experiencing a memorable first day of employment, thinking, “I belong here. The work we’re doing matters. And I matter to them” (Heath & Heath, 2017, p. 21).

In previous years, our faculty fellow implemented programming for new faculty, and in the coming year, the entire Mentoring Guild will support that work. One reason we are excited to begin collectively supporting new faculty is that they will have options to reach out to guild members who will not be responsible for evaluating their portfolios for promotion and tenure. We will offer reading groups, third-year review panels, research gatherings (ours is called a Research Bonanza), grant-writing support, annual review writing workshops, and individual consultations. As new faculty get to know our guild members, they can reach out with individual questions to any one of us.

We will coordinate with our CTL so that we complement rather than duplicate offerings. The CTL offers monthly workshops to new faculty each fall, and we will attend those workshops as well so that we can answer any questions our new faculty have. After that semester of institutional programming, we will begin professional development and support sessions for new faculty within our college.

Our Mentoring Guild is made stronger by the partnerships we have formed in our college. We receive support from our dean’s office in the form of monetary support for books, grab and go snacks for writing retreats, and stipends for Mentoring Guild summer work. In addition, our dean has helped publicize the Mentoring Guild in our college-wide meetings and communications so that the work is validated from our executive office. Our dean invites our faculty fellow to make presentations to the full administrative council (dean, associate deans, department chairs, and center directors) several times each year so that they are aware of the work we are doing and so that we can receive feedback and brainstorm ideas with the college leadership team. We partner with our college communications director, who helps us publicize our events and offerings. In addition, we send the communications director ideas for recognizing our faculty in regular communications (e.g., weekly newsletter, electronic signage, college meeting planning). Finally, within our college, we partner with our doctoral program. With our dean’s office, they co-sponsor our writing retreats by providing coffee, tea, and workspace. We invite their doctoral students to join our writing retreats so that they can meet faculty (potential dissertation committee members), deepen their writing skills, and give themselves space and time to make progress on qualifying exams or portions of their dissertation research. These partnerships also help to raise the visibility of the Mentoring Guild as a bona fide support structure in our college. When partners recognize a faculty need, they are more apt to share it with us when we are visible, authentic partners.

We also partner with our university’s CTL, which offers a mid-career faculty learning community (FLC) titled ReVision. Our faculty fellow is a co-facilitator of this FLC. Our guild members receive priority consideration in ReVision so that they benefit from interactions with other mid-career faculty from across campus. Three of our five original members have now participated in the campus mid-career FLC. Of the other two original members, one retired at the semester break and the other is an experienced departmental chairperson.

Our developmental community model provides an example of community-based participatory research (CBPR) (Berge et al., 2009; Israel et al., 2011; Minkler, 2004) as we work together to solve practical problems related to faculty support by focusing primarily on real-world applications during program development. Minkler and Wallerstein (2008) describe CBPR as being based in a community and its needs rather than placed in a community. Like Israel et al. (2011), we recognize the community as a unit of identity; build on the strengths and resources within the community; facilitate collaborative, equitable partnerships in all phases of the program research and implementation; promote co-learning and capacity building among all stakeholders; integrate a balance between research and action; and develop systems through an interactive cycle. As we continued to move from theory to practice, we were also influenced by the emerging field of implementation science (Damschroder et al., 2009), or the study of how programs are implemented in community settings.

Similarly, we have been influenced by more nimble models of evaluation. Most program evaluation models are summative and include periods of implementation and data gathering followed by a period of analyzing data and drawing conclusions. Most program evaluation models evaluate success or achievement once implementation is completed. Developmental evaluation (Patton, 2008, 2011), however, has been identified for use in innovative settings that are in a state of continuous development and adaptation. The goal of developmental evaluation is to bring data forward to make decisions and guide choices throughout the process of development and implementation. Developmental evaluation is meant for program developers who are committed to ongoing program development and revision, those who may never want to achieve a fixed state. Patton (2008, 2011) contends that developmental evaluation engages a variety of stakeholders in the developmental process and requires a commitment to a culture of innovation. With developmental evaluation, data are neither summative (end) nor formative (in process to an end) but rather support a more ongoing process of constant adaptation. Developmental evaluation invites an atmosphere of constant collection and integration of feedback, merging the processes of program development and evaluation.

As an example of our commitment to CBPR and developmental evaluation, we will provide an example from our writing retreats. During the pandemic, our first writing retreat was held virtually. In a time when faculty were often working in isolation, the retreat provided an opportunity to connect with other faculty scholars in a supportive virtual environment. It provided community as well as accountability and helped faculty members focus on their research interests and obligations. When COVID restrictions eased, we advertised a writing retreat that would be held on campus for four consecutive days. While we had several who registered, we also received apologetic emails from faculty who could not commit to making the trip to campus each day. They told us about issues with child care, end-of-semester appointments, and loss of time that would result from the commute. Many of our faculty members live nearly two hours away from campus, so they might spend four hours each day just driving to campus. Furthermore, we realized that many of those affected were already marginalized in other ways. They were newer faculty who lived in more affordable areas distant from our tourist town campus. They were new parents, restricted in their child care options. We did not wait to implement the retreat to revise the offering. Rather, we met and determined that we would meet the first day in person, offering a special time to gather, sharing tips and resources, and offering appointments with our grants office and library consultants. Then, we would work virtually for the next three days. As soon as we changed the modality of the meeting pattern of our retreat, our enrollment increased by 46%, with half of the new registrants being minoritized faculty.

The RCOE Mentoring Guild’s inputs, or resources, include time and space for regular meetings, faculty who are willing to dedicate time to regular meetings and program planning, funds for books and food, cards for writing personalized notes to faculty, support of unit leadership, and recognition that the Mentoring Guild is an endeavor worthy of faculty time. Our faculty fellow receives one course release per semester, which provides time for her to organize our meetings and other communications and planning. After the first year of work, the guild members and faculty fellow received small stipends through our dean’s office to support summer work and planning for Year 2. These stipends were unexpected but indicate the value of our work to our administration.

As outcomes for our first year, our guild members indicate that they have an expanded professional network and that they are learning from and being mentored by near peers within the small but growing Mentoring Guild community. They agree that this service commitment, unlike some others, directly supports their personal and professional missions. One guild member commented, “The work is fun, meaningful, and not mentally taxing. It’s service that I look forward to and I’m able to connect with others within my college.” Another noted the rewards of having the opportunity to brainstorm community initiatives that help shape our institutional culture in positive ways and then being able to implement them so quickly. Members have enjoyed visibility within the college and access to upper administration. All feedback from our programming has been positive, especially the feedback from our writing retreats.

Perhaps one of the most significant outcomes of our Developmental Community and Mentoring Guild is that they have gotten such positive traction and feedback on campus that our provost has endorsed scaling them up to the institutional level beginning with the 2023–2024 academic year. To that end, the RCOE Faculty Fellow has been appointed as the new Director of Faculty Mentoring and Career Support in the university’s CTL, a type of position our university has never had.

Due to the siloed nature of academia, it can be difficult for new (and seasoned) faculty to make the connections necessary to succeed. Pre-pandemic, only 41% of PhD earners who had committed to employment reported that they would be going into academia (NCSES, 2020). Once there, another portion of that 41% eventually leaves, as evidenced by the ever-expanding body of “quit lit”— personal reflections posted to various digital outlets about how and why the author left the academy (McKenzie, 2021). Our guild model is one way to help mitigate the isolation and frustrations that often lead to these exits. In removing the sentries from the ivory tower by making processes transparent, providing recognition for accomplishments, and otherwise offering guidance and mentoring to new and existing faculty, we are buttressing the guild tower and creating a legacy of welcoming and true collegiality for those who come after us to the academy. Rather than treating academia as an elite club that few can join, we are throwing the doors open and welcoming new colleagues to our ranks, not only for their benefit but also for ours. After all, people are our most valuable resource.