Collaboration with partner institutions, diverse in their missions and their student bodies, is essential to the PFF program. The involvement of faculty members from these settings makes it possible for university graduate students to experience first-hand what it's like to be a professor in one or several of the educational settings where graduates are likely to get jobs.

Mentors from partner institutions help PFF Fellows learn about their campuses by inviting them to attend faculty orientations or departmental meetings, asking them to teach a class or a unit of a course, explaining the process for achieving tenure at their institutions, and a host of other mentoring experiences.