One widely accepted way to increase the changes of success of a new faculty member is the establishment of a relationship with a mentor, usually a senior faculty member, who serves as a trusted guide through the transition from graduate student to the tenure track and beyond. New faculty members need advice and support in a number of areas, including research and teaching techniques; finding and obtaining relevant career-related resources; the norms and expectations of the professorate in general and those of their specific campus; the institution's bureaucratic and political organization; protection from grave mistakes; and defense when the protegee's performance or character is publicly questioned (adapted from Blackwell, 1989, p. 13)

Each new economics faculty member should have a mentor, but all too often one is not available. This may be especially true for new female faculty, since only 8.4% of tenured full professors and 15.4% of tenured associate professors at U.S. Ph.D.-granting economics departments are females (Bartlett, 1998), and both parties may be reluctant to enter a male mentor/female protegee relationship. In order to help fill the gap when no actual mentor is available, and to provide assistance when one is available, we have constructed an annotated list of printed and electronic resources for new faculty. These include resources about teaching, research, service, and specific skills and knowledge that transcend these three basic areas. Compiling the list is an on going project, maintained and frequently updated electronically, and can be viewed on the World-Wide-Web at the following URL: http://www.umr.edu/~lindam/mentoring/mentor.htm.¹

The list includes only a fraction of the resources available - those we have found most useful in our own careers as either junior faculty or mentors. Some are specific to the experiences of economics faculty, while others are more general, but all of them give valuable information and insights to new faculty members. This list is divided into sections, each of which addresses a different facet of an academic economist's career.

A very important concern for new faculty is generating original scholarly works and obtaining financial support for research, and mentoring can have a significant influence on new faculty development in this area. We provide a list of resources about improving research skills, the article writing and review process, locating research and grant opportunities, and writing successful proposals.

Teaching is also important, and the list includes a variety of teaching-related items. These resources contain very little about what should be taught, but instead concentrate on the processes of teaching and learning: teaching techniques, the use of classroom technology, and the evaluation of teaching and teachers.

Next, although research and teaching are viewed (correctly) by most faculty as their primary professional responsibilities, it is crucial to establish the appropriate balance between these activities and service responsibilities. New faculty must understand both the opportunities and risks involved in order to make the most of service commitments. Further complicating matters, these professional tradeoffs must be made against a background of the new academic's personal life. Accordingly, sections of the resource list provide valuable insights for striking the appropriate balance among these basic professional activities as well as between professional and private aspects of life as an academic.

Since a primary goal of tenure-track members is to obtain tenure, and since expectations and processes vary greatly across institutions and economics departments, the new faculty member must identify the steps to take (and those to avoid) in order to obtain tenure. Institution-specific characteristics of the tenure process may be obtained from colleagues and written procedures, and the resources appearing in this section of the list provide more general guidance concerning the process.

Finally, we also include in the resource list sections devoted to other topics of interest to academic economists, such as networking and issues for faculty who are not in tenure-track positions. The networking section includes a list of economics associations along with electronic resources, such as web-site information for many of the economics organizations worldwide that offer new faculty members support from and connections to colleagues with similar concerns and experience at other institutions.

In conclusion, although our resource list can serve as a self-help guide for new faculty in economics, it is by no means an adequate substitute for professional and personal support within an institution. It is instead complementary to the mentor. As we continue to build this list, we are mindful that the resources would also help faculty who want to become good mentors, and therefore recommend its use by university administrators and faculty who are committed to the success of new faculty members. An important goal of ours as we continue to compile the resource list is stimulating discussions among all colleagues interested in the challenges we face as faculty members, administrators, and professionals concerned about the vitality of the economics dis cipline.

1 We are very interested in hearing from readers who know about resources that ought to be included. The authors can be contacted by e-mail directly through the web-site.

References
Bartlett, R. (1998). Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. American Economic Review, 88(2) 532-535.

Blackwell, J.E. (1989, Sept-Oct). Mentoring: An action strategy for increasing minority faculty. Academe, 8-14.