Team Grants: Mentoring Exemplars 2022-23

Pamela Scott-Bracey, New College; Mariya Gavrilova Aguilar, Department of Management; Jeff Allen, Department of Information Science; Ashley Reis, New College 

The Inclusive Learning & Mentoring Reading Group at UNT 
Mentoring program and reading group for faculty focused on promoting diversity awareness, as well as supporting researching, sharing, and implementing inclusive practices within UNT classrooms. By creating safe spaces for scholarly dialogue, promoting belongingness across campus, and bringing awareness to challenges that underrepresented students face, The Inclusive Learning & Mentoring Reading Group at UNT supports all three priority areas of UNT’s 2020/2025 Strategic Plan: 1) Student Empowerment and Transformation, 2) People and Processes, and 3) Scholarly Activity and Innovation. Meetings are held twice per month in both virtual and face\to\face formats. This program, which focuses on professional and personal accountability, is organized by four (4) full\time faculty members, while also engaging a wide variety of faculty members and graduate students by helping them gain more institutional knowledge, develop professional networks, and provide supportive teaching and research resources. Our team members include Dr. Pamela Scott Bracey, Clinical Associate Professor, New College\ UNT at Frisco; Dr. Mariya Gavrilova Aguilar, Senior Lecturer, Department of Management, Ryan College of Business; Dr. Jeff Allen, Regents Professor, UNT College of Information; and Dr. Ashley Reis, Clinical Associate Professor, New College @ UNT at Frisco.

Another Look at Firearms in America: Team Mentoring Project
Brooke Nodeland, Marck Saber, Bob Wall, Department of Criminal Justice; Lee DeBoer, Criminal Justice, Collin College 

UNT’s designation as an R1 research institution creates an opportunity for all faculty to engage in meaningful research. This mentoring grant brings together researchers from various ranks at different institutions to initiate the first comprehensive examination of firearm ownership in the United States since 1994. Together, we are updating the original National Survey of Private Ownership of Firearms (NSPOF) to gather important information related to the size, composition, and ownership of the American firearm stock, as well as how and why they were acquired, how they are stored, whether or not they are carried, and the defensive use of firearms for self-protection. Findings will be used to inform the ongoing discussion related to firearms and firearm policy. 

Jacqueline Vanhoutte, Priscilla Ybarra, David Holdeman, Robert Upchurch, Jehanne Dubrow, Department of English  
My mentoring grant involves setting up consultations with BIPOC full professors from other R1 universities, to help with arevision of our PAC’s standing procedures. While our Personnel Affairs Committee has traditionally done an excellent job, our standing procedures do not reflect recent changes in our departmental makeup and in the fields of literary studies, creative writing, and writing and rhetoric studies. Advice to revise our PAC standing procedures was a key insight English gained from last year’s Academic Program Review. We are persuaded that we need more inclusive procedures, which support and reward the research of all our faculty members, not just those in established fields. We have invited three full professors to consult with our PAC and our faculty this coming April. After discussing the expert recommendations with the Chair and the College, the PAC will assay a revision of its standing procedures. The target goals and intended outcomes for this team mentoring grant focus on improving our departmental function for all by creating standing procedures that recognize and reward the innovative research of our diverse faculty.

For more information, please contact Jacqueline.vanhoutte@unt.edu