As a new professor at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ of just over a year, Kate DuprĂ© has had to adapt to a whole different university and way of life—especially now that she’s no longer living on an island.

“I taught at Memorial University in Newfoundland for 10 years,” she says. “The oil and gas industry really changed and it was amazing to see the growth and people being more excited about jobs and the economy. It was a fun time to be there.”

Now, DuprĂ© is a professor of psychology at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, specializing in occupational health and safety in the workplace. While she says her classes at Memorial were similar, even though she taught in the business department, there are still some learning curves after a decade.

“Things like trying to get students involved and learning new strategies to do that in a bigger class. Even after 10 years, that was new to me,” she says.

Class sizes aren’t the only changes to which DuprĂ© has had to adapt. She says ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s first-year seminar courses are drastically different than the courses she’s previously taught.

Her upper-year courses at Memorial, such as human resource management and organizational behaviour, were more content-focused, while first-year seminars emphasize discussion and opinion. Dupré notes the students themselves are also different.

“For me, I love teaching at different levels because if you don’t, you forget the evolution of the academic experience,” she says. “Teaching first year is fun to see people who are very excited to be at university and starting out and learning new things. But at the same time it’s challenging because they’re not quite prepared for the work involved.”

To help with the gap between high school and first year, Dupré makes sure to give her students examples, like case studies and videos, that break down the theoretical aspects of the material.

Another way she keeps her students interested and engaged comes from her research.

Dupré was awarded a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 2012 with the aim of examining what happens when people are injured at work and the effect it has on their families. Along with some of her students, she researches workplace injury implications with the hope it could one day impact policies and create healthier environments for employees and those around them.

As someone who studies workplaces so in depth, it’s high praise that DuprĂ© calls ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ an “exceptional workplace.”

“It is just a really nice place to work. For me, doing research on work and life, I truly appreciate being able to do what I love in a place that is really great to work in.”

Getting a new job and being in a new environment can be unsettling. But professor Emily Heath is taking it in stride, making new developments in her cancer research and challenging herself in teaching, all during her first year at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´.

Heath joined the Physics department in winter 2014, bringing with her a PhD in Medical Radiation Physics from McGill University and four years of teaching experience from Ryerson University. Her move to ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ also marked the beginning of her collaboration with the Ottawa Regional Cancer Centre at the Ottawa Hospital.

“Having a collaboration with the hospital is great because that kind of moves my ideas closer to being something that could help patients,” says Heath.

Currently, her research is focused on a simulation program called 4D Monte Carlo, which uses data from radiation therapy patients to see if they are getting the correct dosage of treatment.

“We monitor what comes out of the machine, but we don’t have a way to monitor what got into the patient,” says Heath.

Being connected with the hospital not only provides access to patients, but it also gives access to the machines used to treat them, which Heath’s program is modeled after.

But the move to ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ has also provided Heath with some challenges. This semester, she’s teaching Electricity and Magnetism, a second year course brand new to the department.

“I feel like I’m relearning the stuff right before I teach it to the students, so that has been challenging,” she says.

Despite its difficulties, Heath says she enjoys the challenge and thinks refreshing herself on the topic will help her research. Overall, she says she’s been really encouraged from her time at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´.

“[It] was really nice to be able to discuss a teaching challenge or research challenge with my colleagues,” says Heath about bringing questions to the faculty lunchroom. “That’s quite different from where I was before, it’s not the same kind of atmosphere.”

This past year was one of transition since Heath was still supervising some students at Ryerson, but she says she’s now looking forward to settling into Ottawa.

“This year I’m dropping some of those connections and starting out being able to spend more time focusing on my ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ responsibilities, and building up my program here.”

As someone who has spent much of their academic career working with university instructors in promoting teaching excellence, new faculty hires are of a particular interest to me. Part of that interest stems from the fact that new faculty members face significant challenges as they take on their first academic appointments. For example, despite the fact that many of these individuals have little, if any, teaching preparation, they can be assigned some of the most demanding teaching roles typically involving very large lecture courses.

In addition to teaching requirements, new faculty often encounter difficulties simply understanding the culture and structure of their university. While they may have encountered some elements of this culture as graduate students, the complexities of facing these elements as new faculty members can be bewildering.

Unlike many other professions where a period of internship precedes formal entrance into the profession – such as those typically found in the health professions or articling associated with the legal profession – new academics do not generally have an opportunity to develop the professional skills designed to help them transition into actual practice. This lack of preparation can often result in frustration and stress in the initial years of their appointment, which can serve as a significant barrier in building a strong foundation to their careers and positioning them well in terms of attaining tenure.

In order to assist new faculty in experiencing a productive first year, a number of Canadian universities have begun to explore formal mentoring programs. The response from new faculty has been generally very positive and many participants have experienced a much better adjustment and specific benefits, including high grant application success and greater comfort with their teaching assignments.

While mentoring is not altogether new in the university setting, much of what occurred in the past was informal and did not achieve the targeted outcomes. More formal programs generally have the support of key administrators, consider what kind of training a mentor may need, monitor progress and are more reflective in matching senior faculty with new hires.

Moreover, there is a growing belief that traditional models of mentoring characterized by one mentor and one mentee may not be the most effective approach. Increasingly, consideration is being given to models of mentoring that have a new faculty member interact with a number of senior faculty members. The case for this more expanded model of mentoring addresses issues such as the heavy workload that traditional models place on a single mentor and acknowledges that the needs of new faculty can be better addressed by working with a number of faculty members each contributing a varied set of skills and background.

In establishing mentor programs, universities would directly address a need frequently voiced by new hires and assist new faculty in becoming more positive and contributing members of the university community.

In addition to New Faculty Orientation, the EDC offers a learning community aimed at facilitating new faculty’s adjustment process as they begin their new venture at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´. .