IFH core faculty members Dr. Darina Petrovsky and Dr. Ann Nguyen are the recipients of grants from Rutgers University Equity and Inclusion’s Mutual Mentoring Program.

Dr. Petrovsky, assistant professor at Rutgers School of Nursing, was awarded a grant along with IFH team members, Dr. Marie Sizemore, Dr. Login George, Dr. Yanping Jiang, Dr. Elizabeth Luth, Dr. Michelle Chen, and Dr. Brett Millar, for their project “Peer-Networking to Foster Research and Collaboration within the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research.”

The overarching purpose of the team grant project is to build mentoring partnerships between peers at the Institute for Health and senior faculty across Rutgers University. The project’s goals are to 1) form a peer-to-peer pre-tenure mentoring network at the Institute for Health; 2) excel at research by facilitating grants proposal and manuscript writing; and 3) connect with peer and senior faculty both within and outside of the Institute whose research aligns with ours.

Dr. Nguyen, assistant research professor at the Center for State Health Policy, was awarded a grant along with Dr. Jessica Hamilton of the Department of Psychology, Dr. Linda Oshin of the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Dr. Tanya Saraiya of the Department of Clinical Psychology, Dr. Farzin Khosrow-Khavar and Dr. Chintan Dave of the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science at IFH, and Dr. Todd Vachon of the School of Management and Labor Relations.

Their project, “Early Career Peer Mentoring Network (PMN): Supporting, Sustaining, and Striving for Success,” intends to establish a peer mentoring network focused on early career faculty aiming to promote equity at Rutgers through research, teaching, and service. The primary goal of the program is to bridge silos and identify, establish, and sustain peer collaborations.

The Mutual Mentoring program supports faculty at any career stage in developing robust mentorship networks, within and outside of Rutgers University, to combat isolation and ensure all faculty have the resources they need to thrive.

The Mutual Mentoring Program, developed at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is an established vehicle for providing comprehensive support to faculty that also gives them agency in defining the modes of support that will be most useful to support their success.