In the first year, there were 19 students from four disciplines involved in PFF. Five doctoral students each from Communication Studies, Mathematics and Statistics, and Sociology participated. Four doctoral students from English participated. In 1998-1999, there will be seven doctoral students from Communication Studies and four or five from English, Mathematics and Statistics, and Sociology. We have not yet finished recruiting all the participants for this coming year.

Communication Studies (2--Chair and Director of Graduate Studies); English (3--Chair, Director of Graduate Studies, Placement Officer); Mathematics and Statistics (2--Chair and Director of Graduate Studies); and Sociology (1--former Chair). The total number of graduate faculty directly involved in the program is 8. However, a number of graduate faculty have volunteered their time to make presentations at our campus seminars. Graduate faculty from Higher Education Administration, Educational Psychology, History, English, and Mathematics have participated.

The number of Aofficial@ mentors: Communication Studies (8), English (6), Mathematics (6), Sociology (7). At several institutions, in addition to discipline-specific mentors, our students work with area coordinators. So, at Doane College, we work with Professor Dick Wolter, Humanities Division Chair, who himself is in the Department of Philosophy. Likewise, at Metropolitan Community College, we work with discipline-specific mentors as well as division heads of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Mathematics. This adds four additional mentoring faculty. So, we believe we actively work with 31 mentoring faculty members. This coming year, we will begin working with some new faculty mentors. This is partly due to faculty leaves or changes in department chairs. Or, merely the desire of departments to share responsibilities. In addition, there are a number of Aunofficial@ mentors. When our students visit departments, their mentors often have them visit with a variety of faculty. It is particularly common to have senior faculty mentors have our students work with junior faculty who were recently hired and working toward tenure.

UNL is a round-two grant recipient. In 1997-1998, we had our first class of PFF participants. Only a few of our participants were ready for the job market last year. However, two Communication Studies participants took positions (Jayne Morgan, tenure-track assistant professor, University of Northern Iowa; Erika Kirby, instructor, Creighton University); one of our Math PFF participants took a job (Rob Krueger, tenure-track assistant professor, Coe College), and one of our English PFF participants accepted a position (Chauna Craig, tenure-track assistant professor, University of Arkansas-Monticello).

First, PFF activities are now written into the long-range College of Arts & Sciences plan for graduate education. Second, our relationship with distance partners (this past year we worked with Grambling State University) is funded by internal money from the Office of Graduate Studies. Third, valuable administrative assistance is funded internally by the College of Arts & Sciences (assistantship-line for graduate student project coordinator, publication assistance for brochures, etc., and event planning assistance) and the Office of Graduate Studies (budget management, bill paying, etc.). Fourth, the Office of Graduate Studies has just made the PFF seminars Graduate College courses (last year we cross-listed the courses among the participating departments). The PFF seminars are the first ever Graduate College courses and, as a result, they represent a significant change in the graduate culture at UNL. Fifth, the Dean of Graduate Studies is preparing a financial package to present to Academic Affairs for full sustained funding of PFF ($24,000 a year). This will go forward as a proposed item for inclusion in the university’s biennial budget. The Associate Dean of Graduate Studies reports that this will be Graduate Studies’ "top priority" and that she is confident that PFF will be funded. Also, we have every reason to believe that the Dean of Arts & Sciences will continue his financial support of PFF beyond the life of the grant.

Remember 1997-1998 was the inaugural year for PFF at UNL. We learned a lesson from our first year experience. It is very important to take steps to develop strong relationships with partner faculty. In the case of three disciplines, we worked during the spring and summer to forge relationships with partner-institution departments. We added one discipline to the program in a somewhat hurried fashion over the summer. As a result, our partner relationships were not as strong and the mentoring program was not always as effective. During the summer, we are working on shoring up that relationship by revisiting the campuses.

Consequently, we will move very deliberately in adding disciplines. During the course of the 1998-1999 academic year, we will identify new disciplines that wish to participate and work on developing strong ties with partner faculty in those disciplines. The students from these new areas will enter the program in the fall of 1999. At present, our administrative infrastructure requires that we move at a modest pace. We simply do not have the staff to add many new disciplines quickly. We will never have PFF participants without the accompanying partner-institution mentors.

Department faculty members drive PFF at UNL. UNL is one of only two PFF programs administered by a regular faculty member. The program is governed by an advisory committee made up of faculty representatives from the participating departments. Various administrative units--the College of Arts & Sciences and the Office of Graduate Studies--lend support but do not determine policy. Likewise, various support units--Teaching Learning Center, Distance Education, Instructional Technology--work with us but do not set policy. PFF exists in Communication Studies, English, Mathematics, and Sociology because one or more members of the graduate faculty have agreed to serve as the PFF liaison. Many of these faculty have regularly attended the on-campus seminars. They contacted, visited, and recruited mentoring faculty at partner institutions. They have guided the development of the PFF curriculum.

The meaning of the phrase Asustaining structures@ is somewhat unclear. We have tied PFF involvement to one of the appointed/elected departmental positions. The faculty members we work with are influential because they serve as departmental chairs, graduate chairs, or placement officers. All of the participating faculty members are Graduate Fellows and are active in advising graduate students and directing dissertations.

Last spring, we held a capstone retreat at the Lied Conference Center in Nebraska City. This brought together all of PFF=s major constituencies--administrators, partner faculty, graduate faculty, PFF Fellows. In a series of breakout groups, we took up the issues mentioned in this item. Finding ways to support partner faculty was a point of special emphasis at the capstone retreat . We are working to reward mentors for all their efforts on our behalf. A report from that retreat is presently being prepared and will be distributed to all students, faculty, and administrators working with PFF.

In addition, most of our on-campus seminars involve participation by partner faculty members. So, there is a large number of partner-faculty visits to UNL every year. In these seminars, partner faculty interact with PFF Fellows and UNL faculty (to a lesser degree) about the realities of life at various different kinds of institutions. They do reflect on what might be done to improve graduate preparation.

We just finished with our first class of PFF participants. Only a handful were ready for the job market last year, most are now working on finishing dissertations. However, four of the nineteen did accept faculty positions last year. We are in touch with each of them. They will participate, either by telephone or video conference, in our PFF seminars this coming year.

Interestingly, there was a very good match between the kind of positions these students sought and the positions they accepted. Rob Krueger, Math, wanted to teach at a liberal arts college and accepted a position at that kind of institution. Likewise, Jayne Morgan wanted to teach at a comprehensive university with a Master=s program and that is precisely the kind of position she accepted at the University of Northern Iowa. Both students were mentored at institutions that very much resembled the institutions at which they obtained academic employment. Chauna Craig, English, just accepted a position within the last couple of weeks. She told us that the institution was very impressed with her Aprofessionalism@ and she attributes this, at least in part, to her preparation in PFF.

We are putting assessment procedures in place to track PFF alumni and assess the influence of the program. We have collected evaluation data on each seminar session and on the quality of mentoring experiences. Also, students have produced dossiers that highlight the quality of their teaching and professional preparation.

As we reported in #7 above, we are tracking our PFF alumni. Only four of our first class has gone on the job market and taken positions. Many more of them will move into the job market in this coming year after completion of dissertations.

In Communication Studies, Ronald Lee, PFF Director, will participate on a panel at the 1998 National Communication Association Convention in New York City that will discuss preparing future faculty. We do not know of any other UNL faculty engaging in PFF activity within disciplinary associations.

Last year, one of our first on-campus seminars examined the emerging trends in faculty roles and responsibilities. A group of faculty from Teacher=s College=s Department of Higher Education Administration explored this issue. Many of these issues were subsequently taken up in the seminars, especially assessment, diversity, general education requirements, and technology.

The UNL PFF program has spent a good deal of energy tutoring PFF participants in instructional technology and distance education. We have tried to acquaint them with these new instructional demands.

The first year our PFF participants had equal gender representation, but very little ethnic minority representation. This year there will be several African Americans among the participants. As you know, UNL has distance partners. A group of our PFF students visited Grambling State University (an HBCU) in the late spring. We are working to forge new distance relationships with institutions that have large Hispanic and Native American populations. Our local partners are both rural and urban. Metropolitan Community College, one of our partners, is the most diverse institution in the state.

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