Building Communities of Practice Through Faculty Mentorship Programs

Building an effective mentoring program for community college faculty is a complex and multifaceted task. There are multiple layers of stakeholders and levels of involvement, which at times makes navigating the mentoring relationships challenging and complicates the decision of what types of information to provide to the faculty as part of their mentorship. A strategy for developing a successful mentoring program is creating a community of practice among faulty members to provide support, create dialogue, exchange best practices, and hopefully, create a process of collective learning in a community of practice, where faculty are open to receiving guidance and willing to engage in the process as part of the mentoring program with minimal resistance to learning. This article describes the practices and processes of a newly-formed faculty mentoring program at Wake Technical Community College and the aims to add to the body of literature of community college faculty mentoring, vocational training, learning resistance, and faculty development.