As a beginning academician, I was hired as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Idaho. The mentoring I received from caring faculty and staff provided the foundation needed to launch a decades-long career in higher education. Naturally, therefore, nearly 35 years later, I returned to the U of I for a sabbatical for the purpose of providing four months of “paying forward” the foundational mentoring I received.  The U of I department had recently begun onboarding an untenured assistant professor with experience at a previous university, and a faculty member hired the previous week, so opportunities were presented for reflecting, mentoring, and visioning. Using qualitative approaches including weekly scheduled, formal 1:1 meetings, as well as random, casual conversations, on-and-off campus, provided relationship-building, context-setting, deep reflection, and strategizing. Formal visits to class sessions as well as research discussions allowed for philosophical discovery and longitudinal planning. Results of the experience included, but were not limited to: having an experienced, non-partisan professional serving as a resource to beginning new faculty; expressing concerns and asking questions to someone from outside the department; talking through all aspects of the faculty members’ careers and life; exploring different aspects of academic success from a cross-generational perspective; encouraging new faculty to work through the beginning aspects of imposter syndrome; providing feedback to department leadership, as appropriate, for opening communication channels in unexpected ways; studying logistics of university, college, and department processes and protocols, including P&T prep. Consequently, administrators should consider these results and should consider pairing new faculty with a non-partisan, yet veteran colleague in the discipline as a component of the onboarding process.