Dr. Susan Brondyk, who is the Irwin B. and Margie E. Floyd Associate Professor of Education and department chair at Hope College, has been named to the Advisory Board of Project IMPACT, which is slated to create curricular, professional development and standards to be used by mentors to support new administrators, counselors and teachers in Michigan’s schools.
Project IMPACT (Induction & Mentoring Programs for Administrators, Counselors and Teachers) is funded through a Michigan Department of Education (MDE) grant and directed by Western Michigan University faculty. The resources developed under Project IMPACT are anticipated to be available to Michigan school districts during the current 2024-25 school year.
The appointment aligns well with Brondyk’s experiences and research interests. Before coming to Hope in 2013, she served as the associate director of Launch into Teaching (LIT) at Michigan State University, working with Dr. Randi Stanulis to support new teachers in struggling urban districts around the country. The group worked with administrators, instructional coaches and building mentors to build school cultures and train mentors in hopes of retaining beginning teachers. While at LIT, Brondyk also trained Woodrow Wilson Fellows mentors.
At Hope, she collaborated with Nancy Cook to design a mentor development program for both P-12 cooperating teachers and college supervisors. In the past three years, she and Dr. Sara Hoeve formally began an induction mentoring program offered to all Hope education graduates, which has been successful in supporting and retaining these new teachers. With national studies showing that 50% of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years due to feeling overwhelmed and burned out, the Hope mentoring program continues the relationship between the new teachers and their college-faculty supervisors, who both know the recent graduates and how they were prepared, and have professional experience and context for offering guidance and encouragement. Following strong interest in the program when Brondyk and Hoeve made a presentation about it during a recent national conference, the two professors are creating a support network for teacher educators at other colleges and universities who are interested in adopting the model.
She is the author of multiple articles published in refereed journals, chapters and books, all of which revolve around mentoring and, in particular, the preparation of mentors.
Brondyk teaches Curriculum/Methods, which includes partnering with local PreK–12 schools to provide learning experiences for her students and to support the teachers who work with her students. Through the years her teaching has also included Classroom Management and having co-led the Hope Comes to Watts May Term, in which students gain experience teaching in an urban setting.
Brondyk graduated from Hope in 1984 and obtained elementary teacher certification at Aquinas College in 1986, and taught at the elementary level for several years. She completed a Master of Arts in Teaching degree in elementary education at Aquinas College in 2000, and a Ph.D. in curriculum, teaching and educational policy at Michigan State University in 2009.