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Five members of the faculty at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law received funding from IUPUI and created MUSCLE, or Mentoring Untenured Scholars for Clinical and Legal Scholarship Excellence. Implemented in 2015, Professors Yvonne Dutton, Carrie Hagan, Margaret Ryznar, Lea Shaver, and Lahny Silva, each received modest travel funding to enable them to meet with mentors in their various areas of expertise.

"I am very grateful that the university has invested in the junior faculty through this program," Professor Ryznar said. "It has allowed me to connect with mentors around the country and to focus on becoming a better teacher and scholar."

Thanks to the program, Professor Dutton was able to attend a conference in her field that gave her the chance to deepen relationships with several mentors; Professor Hagan was able to attend a two-week international trip where she spent time working with two important clinical mentors; Professor Ryznar traveled to Washington, D.C., where she met one-on-one with senior scholars; Professor Shaver added mentoring days onto two other trips; and Professor Silva attended a conference that emphasizes mentorship among black, female law professors.

Professors Dutton, Ryznar, and Shaver wrote about the experience in an article titled, Advancing Faculty Diversity Through Self-Directed Mentoring. The piece was published in the Duke Journal of Gender & Law Policy.

"Most people think of mentoring in terms of official, top-down initiatives," Professor Shaver said. "But the research shows that informal mentoring is actually more valuable. This shaped our bottom-up approach to the project, encouraging junior faculty to proactively seek out advice and build relationships with a network of informal mentors. The extra travel funding allowed me to accept invitations that I otherwise would have had to decline. Alongside those events, I set up hours of one-on-one meetings with outstanding scholars at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley. They were happy to help, and those conversations proved crucial to framing my book project and thinking about post-tenure goals. Participating in MUSCLE has changed the way I think about mentoring. I’m much more intentional now about the ways that I can help my students beyond the classroom. I also encourage them to be proactive in cultivating a network of mentors.”

"The MUSCLE program support made me think more about mentoring, and it made me more willing to seek out additional opportunities to connect with senior scholars and other scholars in my field," Professor Dutton said. "It was a great accountability mechanism that forced me to get out there and ask for advice and input from people 'outside the building.'"