Winning a national teaching award is a public acknowledgment of an individual’s excellence in the classroom and it benefits the winner and their academic home department. However, many outstanding teachers remain unrecognized because the requirements to apply for a teaching award are unfamiliar and time consuming. To overcome this barrier, we developed a Mentorship Program for the USDA Teaching Excellence Awards. Teachers with high potential are mentored by previous award-winners during the application process. The mentorship pairs hold five to 10 virtual meetings as each mentee completes the teaching award application. We interviewed four mentors who served during the 2024 Mentorship Program to identify the benefits, challenges, and impacts of serving as a mentor. A qualitative analysis revealed five common themes about the experience of serving as a mentor to an applicant of the USDA Teaching Award Program: 1) mentors benefitted from the opportunity to reflect upon their own teaching identity and experiences; 2) participation in biweekly conversations about teaching inspired mentors to re-engage with their own teaching; 3) mentors created a successful structure for mentees by dividing the application into smaller, more manageable tasks with scheduled deadlines; 4) mentors served as a liaison between the applicant and the coordinators of the teaching award program to gather information when application instructions were unclear or contradictory; and 5) all mentees experienced periods of self-doubt during the application process that may have derailed their submission of an application if they were completing documents alone; however, mentors provided the support and encouragement that allowed all mentees to complete and submit their applications to the USDA Teaching Excellence Program. Faculty previously recognized for teaching excellence who partner with faculty mentees to develop a teaching award application will experience personal and professional benefits from the planning and completion of this often career-changing document.