Faculty Mentors Forge Bonds, Clarify Academia’s Unwritten Rules

Flanked by several faculty mentees and by her first mentor—her father—Professor of English and Interim Ethnic Studies Chair Sarah Hagelin was honored March 31 with the CFDA Faculty Mentoring Award for 2025.  

This award from the Center for Faculty Development & Advancement (CFDA) commemorates Hagelin’s influence as a faculty leader (she’s an Office of Faculty Affairs fellow) and mentor to more than a dozen faculty members. It also signifies the growth of faculty mentoring across CU Denver. The CFDA coordinates two such programs: one for early-career faculty and another for associate professors pursuing full professor status.  

Together, these programs have engaged more than 40 faculty members in the 2024-25 academic year. “Successful universities foster student success, and we cannot achieve student success without faculty success,” said Turan Kayaoglu, associate vice chancellor of faculty affairs. “And we cannot achieve faculty success without our amazing mentors.”  

So what are mentoring conversations about? Let’s ask Hagelin. “Academia runs by all these unwritten rules and scripts, and people who grow up in this world understand those scripts. I didn’t grow up in this world,” said Hagelin, whose father was a career Air Force officer.  

She recalled her first department chair at New Mexico State University outlining the tenure process to her—the dos and don’ts and the intricate balance of teaching, research, and service required for success. She wanted to pay forward the feeling she had of collaboration, rather than the isolation that independent-minded scholars sometimes feel. “Demystifying those processes is a big part of what has been useful in our mentoring circles and in one-on-one mentoring relationships,” Hagelin said.   

Some mentorship conversations—say, how to remedy a departmental conflict, or which committees to pursue or avoid—cover topics key to faculty members’ professional success. For example, “Service is a part of many faculty contracts, and it’s a part of the job that we learn basically nothing about in graduate school,” Hagelin said. “It really matters to faculty thriving, and to them having enough time to do their research work.” 

Other mentoring conversations cover less fraught topics, such as what newcomers should know about Denver, or which sneaky parking spot just off campus you can find. (Hagelin’s advice on that front is: “Get an electric scooter that you can park like a bike on campus.”)   

CFDA Director Karen Sobel and Assistant Director Thorsten Spehn led the recognition of CU Denver faculty mentors and mentees. 

While CU Denver has more than 1,000 faculty members, a university can feel like an aggregation of small units to those without extra-departmental relationships. Mentoring circles, in which up to a dozen faculty connect through a hub mentor, help faculty learn how peers in different departments pursue similar goals.    

Ultimately, these mentoring relationships are in service to CU Denver’s students. “A faculty member who is thriving is a faculty member able to be there for our students—who often face challenges that students at other universities don’t,” Hagelin said. “It takes quite a bit of emotional labor on the faculty member’s part, and I want to be able to offer that support to students and see them as whole. It’s like the idea of putting on your own oxygen mask first.”   

Get Involved: Faculty of any rank who would like to get involved as a mentor or mentee can contact CFDA for more information.