By Rick Vacek | March 17, 2025
They grew up in vastly different places and cultures, across the world from each other, but their relationships are built on what they have in common as colleagues at The University of Texas at Dallas.
That simple and yet powerful fact of life in two mentor-mentee pairings perfectly encapsulates the benefits of the Faculty Mentoring Program, administered by the Office of the Provost.
It doesn’t just help new faculty members acclimate to their new roles and unfamiliar surroundings.
It helps them feel right at home.
“This is very important for my happiness and how comfortable I am in this department. Having a mentor means a lot.”
DR. YINGZHI LIANG
“This is very important for my happiness and how comfortable I am in this department,” said Dr. Yingzhi Liang, Assistant Professor of Finance and Managerial Economics in the Naveen Jindal School of Management. “Having a mentor means a lot.”
Liang is from Shandong Province, in eastern China on the Yellow Sea. Her mentor, Dr. Simon Siegenthaler, Associate Professor of Finance and Managerial Economics, was raised about 5,000 miles away in Bern, Switzerland.
But that’s practically a hop, skip and a jump compared to the gap Dr. Jason Slinker and Dr. Zihao Ou have bridged as a mentor-mentee pairing in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.
Slinker, Associate Department Head and Professor of Physics, is from Fort Gibson, Oklahoma.
Ou, Assistant Professor of Physics, is from Xinjiang Province, in the northwest corner of China.
That distance: more than 7,000 miles. Now their offices are just a few feet apart, and Ou can see why newcomers are enrolled in the Faculty Mentoring Program right after being hired.
“I think it’s great how they initiate us,” he said.
The message is simple: You’re welcome.
You can’t miss Ou’s office on the second floor of the Sciences Building. It’s right next to the stairwell – the office Slinker visits almost every day.
“I just duck my head in the door and ask, ‘Any questions?’” Slinker said.
Those two words often grow into a conversation that covers a wide variety of topics, both professional and personal.
Among other things, Slinker showed Ou how to …
“Jason guided me to all the resources,” Ou said.
Slinker also guided him to the right furniture store, which uncovers a never-before-revealed benefit of the Faculty Mentoring Program: It can help newcomers find a good sofa. Who knew?
They have something else in common besides their physics discipline: They are achievers.
Slinker has earned numerous awards during his 15 years at UT Dallas, including the 2022 Provost’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Undergraduate Research Mentoring and the 2014 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award.
Soon after he arrived on campus last fall, Ou made a splash with news from his postdoctoral research at Stanford University: He was the lead author of a study that discovered a way to make living skin transparent.
“There are new milestones all the time with Zihao,” said Slinker, who has advised Ou on how to proceed with the ramifications of such an important development in the medical world.
Development. It has been one of Slinker’s most important contributions to UT Dallas. He has served on a university-wide faculty development committee and as the faculty mentor for physics students.
“I joke to myself that in the job here there are no two days the same, but when it comes to mentoring it’s the same way and maybe even on an accelerated time scale,” he said. “You need to become competent at so many things so quickly.
“I think, ‘What would I have liked to know when I was a young faculty member?’ I still can remember back to those times, things that caught me off guard. There’s a constant need to teach and train and support.”
Unquestionably.
It is not unusual for faculty within a UT Dallas school to come from countries all over the globe. The Faculty Mentoring Program makes that less of a barrier by pairing members from the same area of academic expertise.
For Siegenthaler and Liang, that means behavioral and experimental economics, which focuses on human decision-making.
“It has its own culture, so there’s already a connection,” Siegenthaler said. “We speak the same language.”
And in the same pattern as Slinker and Ou, Liang is following in Siegenthaler’s footsteps by teaching the market systems course he developed and taught, Advanced Topics in Capitalism, and he is coaching her through it.
“Whenever I have questions, I just ask him,” she said. “He gave me everything – slides, exams, quizzes, assignments, exercises, even how he connected slides with other slides. He has great documentation of everything.”
But Siegenthaler also likes the way his protégé doesn’t just mimic everything he did. “It’s a good way to polish it and improve the course overall,” he said.
The course is one of many topics they cover during their lunch every Wednesday or just when they see each other in the hallway. They also have discussed tenure, which Siegenthaler has attained.
“Being clear about the tenure requirement and seeing a successful example is a relief, knowing what exactly is required from me,” Liang said. “It resolved my uncertainty.”
Another similarity to Slinker and Ou: The questions range into life advice. Knowing Siegenthaler’s wife and children has helped Liang feel more at home in North Texas, and when she wasn’t sure what to do with herself during winter break, she turned his suggestion into a trip to Mexico.
“Simon is very straightforward, honest and easygoing about everything, and he’s never judgmental,” she said. “I don’t need to worry about, ‘If I ask this, will that leave a bad impression on him or will it not be appropriate?’”
Siegenthaler wanted to be a mentor because he understands that tenured faculty are expected to be leaders and also because he remembers what his mentor, Dr. Kyle Hyndman, did for him seven years ago. They became so close, they even ran Frisco’s Texas Big Star Half Marathon together.
As most mentors will attest, the program’s benefits go both ways, outdistancing any concerns about the time it requires.
Siegenthaler said he has learned a lot from Liang just by discussing her projects and listening to what she cares about in her work.
Liang even helped Siegenthaler’s planning for his sabbatical later this year by offering to connect him with people she knows at the University of Michigan, where she earned her PhD.
There are so many examples like that in the Faculty Mentoring Program, it might as well be called the Faculty Relationships Program.
“It just is a great starting point and makes for deeper connections,” Siegenthaler said. “Everyone benefits from that.”
No matter where they’re from.
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New Matching Process
Beginning in the fall 2025 semester, new faculty will have the option of sending up to three mentor suggestions to Dr. Meghna Sabharwal, Associate Provost for Faculty Success. The names will be reviewed by the department head, who will finalize the selection with mentor consent.
“This new process ensures that both the mentor and mentee have a say in the matching process, and it facilitates early mentor assignment,” Sabharwal said.