From Mentor to Mentoring Networks: Mentoring in the New Academy

By Sorcinelli, Mary Deane Yun, Jung

In the literature of faculty development, mentoring is usually mentioned as a vital contribution to a successful academic career, particularly for women and faculty of color. Mentoring has traditionally been defined as a topdown, one-to-one relationship in which an experienced faculty member guides and supports the career development of a new or early-career faculty member, and research on faculty development and mentoring programs largely has been designed to fit this traditional definition. But recently, a model has been emerging that encourages a broader, more flexible network of support, in which no single person is expected to possess the expertise required to help someone navigate the shoals of a faculty career. In this model, early-career faculty build robust networks by engaging multiple “mentoring partners” in nonhierarchical, collaborative, cross-cultural partnerships to address specific areas of faculty activity, such as research, teaching, working towards tenure, and striking a balance between work and life. These reciprocal partnerships benefit not only the person traditionally known as the “protege” but also the person traditionally known as the “mentor,” since all members of an academic community have something to teach and learn from each other.

This review highlights recent facultydevelopment resources, all published since 2000, that offer fresh models, concepts, and thinking on mentoring in higher education, particularly the mentoring of new and underrepresented faculty. The resources are organized into four areas:

* New conceptualizations of mentoring;

* Recent studies on mentoring;

* Faculty-development programs and practices that promote mentoring;

* Gender, race, and other diversity issues related to mentoring.

NEW MODELS OF MENTORING

Key literature on emerging models of mentoring is included in Resource Box 1. Four recent works provide an overview of seminal models and offer new frameworks for mentoring. A 2003 article, “Academic Mentoring: Enhancing the Use of Scarce Resources” by Pamela Mathews, serves as a comprehensive introduction to the core concepts of mentors and mentoring. Mathews details the key issues that should be considered and addressed (i.e., definition and goals of mentoring; roles and responsibilities of mentors and proteges; and potential benefits of mentoring for the protege, mentor, and organization) when mentoring in an academic environment. Her framework suggests that given the varied components of academic work, mentoring is best undertaken by a number of faculty members, rather than by one individual.

In Susan de Janasz and Sherry Sullivan’s article “Multiple Mentoring in Academe: Developing the Professional Network” (2004), the authors take a more in-depth look at the concept of “multiple mentoring.” Arguing that the traditional hierarchical model of a single, seasoned mentor is no longer realistic in an increasingly complex and changing academic environment, their review of “competency-based” literature and learning-centered approaches to an academic career concludes with the development of a “multi-mentor network” model.

Jean Girves, Yolanda Lepeda, and Judith Gwathmey examine mentoring from a multicultural framework in “Mentoring in a Post- Affirmative Action World” (2005). They too juxtapose the “grooming model” of traditional mentoring with a “networking model” that they see as more inclusive of women and minorities. They also suggest how mentoring models and programs can combine the grooming and networking models and take advantage of the strengths of each.

Brad Johnson’s On Being a Mentor (2007) offers a review and discussion of various mentoring models. In the first section of his book, he presents researchbased findings on why mentoring matters and explores frameworks for both traditional mentoring and alternative versions such as peer mentoring, team mentoring, and e- mentoring.

STUDIES OF MENTORING

As noted in the resources on mentoring models, there is considerable evidence of the benefits of traditionally defined mentoring in an academic career. For example, faculty members with a mentor report more career success and socio-emotional support than faculty members without one. But several recent studies report that having a network of mentoring relationships may enhance career success and personal well-being even more. (See Resource Box II.)

I. J. Hetty van Emmerik reports the results of her research on new, mid-career, and senior faculty in “The More You Can Get the Better: Mentor Constellations and Intrinsic Career Success” (2004). She found that “mentoring constellations” were positively associated with both career and job satisfaction and that individuals with more mentoring constellations seem to gather greater career benefits than those with just one mentor. Van Emmerik concludes that having multiple mentoring contacts is not a substitute for a single mentor but should be in addition to that core relationship.

Similarly, in a study of assistant, associate, and full professors, “Professionals’ Uses of Different Mentor Sources at Various Career Stages: Implications for Career Success” (2000), Joy Van Eck Peluchette and Sandy Jeanquart found that assistant professors with multiple mentors had significantly higher levels of objective and subjective career success than did those with a single or no mentor. In a 2007 study of department chairs and new faculty, “Factors Influencing the Willingness to Mentor First Year Faculty in Physical Education Departments,” Glenna Bower found that department chairs need to initiate mentoring relationships with first-year faculty members and encourage them to develop interdisciplinary connections within and outside the department.

Several resources provide evidence of the value of formal mentoring programs that conceptualize mentoring as a constellation of relationships. One is Carol Cawyer, Sheri Simonds, and Shannon Davis’s examination of a formal mentoring program in “Mentoring to Facilitate Socialization: The Case of the New Faculty Member” (2002). The authors conclude that the most important feature of mentoring may be accessibility, which may be enhanced by encouraging mentoring from multiple faculty members. Also see Ingrid Provident’s findings on the value of faculty mentoring teams in “Outcomes of Selected Cases from the American Occupational Therapy Foundation’s Curriculum Mentoring Project” (2006).

Studies of formal mentoring programs generally conclude by recommending an expansion of networking opportunities. These include “Perceptions of New Social Work Faculty About Mentoring Experiences” by Pamela Wilson, Angela Pereira, and Deborah Valentine (2002); “An Examination of Academic Mentoring Behaviors and New Faculty Members’ Satisfaction With Socialization and Tenure and Promotion Processes” by Paul Schrodt, Carol Cawyer, and Renee Sanders (2003); and “Mentoring Faculty for Success: Recommendations Based on Evaluations of a Program” by Mara Wasburn and Joseph LaLopa (2003).

PROGRAMS AND PRACTICES

Resource Box III contains resources on specific programs and practices focused on designing and implementing effective mentoring networks.

Four resources describe varied approaches that might be taken to foster multiple mentoring relationships. In “Strengthening Collegiality to Enhance Teaching, Research, and Scholarly Practice: An Untapped Resource for Faculty Development” (2001), Gerlese Akerlind and Kathleen Quinlan describe and assess a series of workshops and forums that assist early-career faculty in building collegial networks in research and teaching. Holly Angelique, Ken Kyle, and Ed Taylor have developed a program, the New Scholars Network, that creates peer communities to advance scholarship and teaching while also providing advice on tenure, balancing roles, and managing time (see their 2002 “Mentors and Muses: New Strategies for Academic Success”). In “Developing New Faculty: An Evolving Program” (2001), Gloria Pierce describes the evolution of a year-long program for the development of new faculty, the cornerstone of which is faculty mentoring across career stages. And in “Mentoring Early Career Faculty in Geography: Issues and Strategies” (2005), Susan Hardwick provides pragmatic suggestions for establishing mentoring relationships (e.g., mentoring panels and workshops at conferences of professional associations).

Three resources feature peer-mentoring programs focused specifically on research or teaching. For building networks to support scholarly activities, see “Peer Networking as a Dynamic Approach to Supporting New Faculty” (2001) by Judith Smith, Joy Whitman, Peggy Grant, Annette Stanutz, Jay Russett, and Karon Rankin, as well as “Peer Networking for Tenure-Track Faculty” (2003) by Cynthia Jacelon, Donna Zucker, Jeanne-Marie Staccarini, and Elizabeth Henneman. Both articles present methods for supporting new faculty as scholars, through ongoing peer-mentoring groups that set research goals, discuss scholarship, and share successes and challenges in writing and publishing. In “Transforming a Teaching Culture Through Peer Mentoring: Connecticut College’s Johnson Teaching Seminar for Incoming Faculty” (2006), Michael Reder and Eugene Gallagher describe a year-long seminar for all incoming tenure-track faculty that is facilitated by second- and third-year faculty and “brokered” by a senior faculty fellow and the director of the teaching and learning center. Several resources provide guidance on how recently tenured, mid-career, and senior faculty-as well as academic leaders-can support new faculty. In “Surviving to Tenure” (2006), James Lang describes the range of time- and careermanagement skills that new faculty need to learn from the start of their careers, including how to foster collegial relationships. Martha Stortz (2005) considers faculty-role changes during the mid-career phase of life, focusing specifically on the responsibility of mid-career faculty to mentor the next generation of academics. In “Being a Good Mentor and Colleague” (2006), Linda Worley, Jonathan Borus, and Donald Hilty suggest the types of mentors and mentoring relationships that early-career faculty should seek, as well as offering practical tips on finding mentors and questions to discuss with them. “Mentoring From Your Department Chair: Building a Valuable Relationship” (2006) by Linda Noble encourages earlycareer faculty to use not only colleagues but also chairs and deans as mentors. She highlights situations in which chairs can be particularly helpful mentors and encourages new faculty to use a range of mentoring resources.

And finally, four online resources from Northern Arizona University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Southern Florida, and the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh describe a variety of network-based mentoring programs for new and underrepresented faculty.

DIVERSITY

The fourth and final Resource Box addresses key issues and questions about mentoring as it relates to diversity-in particular, the mentoring of faculty of color and women. The literature indicates that researchers and practitioners are still struggling to determine which mentoring models and practices best support these groups. This is evidenced by the range of resources cited that challenge traditional ideas about what mentoring is, who has access to its benefits, and whether or not the race and/or gender of the participants affects the value and efficacy of the mentoring relationship.

In “Mentoring as a Precursor to Incorporation: An Assessment of the Mentoring Experience of Recently Minted Ph.D.s” (2003), Regina Dixon-Reeves’s study of African-American junior faculty broadens the definition of mentoring to include peer advisors, counselors, role models, sponsors, and/or guides. Using this significantly expanded definition, 97 percent of her study participants reported having a mentor, compared to no more than 12 percent in previous studies of African-American faculty that applied the traditional hierarchal definition.

Deborah Harley offers some practical advice on negotiating these various definitions in “In a Different Voice: An African-American Woman’s Experiences in the Rehabilitation and Higher Education Realm” (2005). Harley urges faculty of color to obtain as much mentoring as possible but to acknowledge that proteges and mentors sometimes have differing, if not conflicting, perspectives about what mentoring really is. While Harley suggests that mentors do not need to be the same race or gender as the protege or even be from the same program, department, or college, she notes that proteges would be best served by determining how their definitions of mentoring align with those of their mentors.

In contrast to Harley, Sharon K. Gibson’s research in “Mentoring of Women Faculty: The Role of Organizational Politics and Culture” (2006) suggests that gender may in fact matter to a protege. Some female participants in her study did not see male mentors as people with whom they could address issues that are particularly salient for women, due to a lack of experience and/or understanding among male mentors. In “Diversity Issues in Academic Mentoring” (2000), Janice Witt Smith, Wanda Smith, and Steven Markham point to additional research that indicates that same-race and same-gender mentorships provide more psycho-social support than cross-race and crossgender relationships. In the authors’ study of the mentoring experiences of 765 faculty, they also found that women reported being in more mentoring relationships than men, while minorities were not as successful at finding mentors, particularly if they wanted a samerace pairing.

Three articles and one Web site offer practice-based resources based on broader definitions of mentoring and/or the network-based model of mentoring. These include Christine Stanley and Yvonna Lincoln’s “Cross-Race Faculty Mentoring” (2005), in which the authors describe their experiences as an African-American female protege and Caucasian female mentor, as well as offering 10 lessons learned on effective cross-race mentoring. In “Mentoring Partnerships for Minority Faculty and Graduate Students in Mental Health Services Research” (2006), Howard Waitzkin, Joel Yager, Tassy Parker, and Bonnie Duran describe two minority-mentoring programs designed to build research productivity by creating a variety of mentoring experiences for their participants, including tutorial sessions, one-on-one mentoring, informal get-togethers, and protege- support groups. This approach is similar to one instituted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where participants in a formal mentoring program for female faculty engage in a conversation series, peer-mentoring groups, a mentoring luncheon, and an annual reception. And finally, Mara Wasburn offers a comprehensive review of faculty-mentoring models and programs in “Mentoring Women Faculty: An Instrumental Case Study of Strategic Collaboration” (2007), which also describes an ambitious pilot program for female faculty at Purdue University based on “strategic collaboration”-a hybrid of the traditional grooming and emerging networking models.

Resource Box I

MODELS

* de Janasz, S. C., & Sullivan, S. E. (2004). Multiple mentoring in academe: Developing the professional network. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 64(2), 263-283.

* Girves, J. E., Zepeda, Y., & Gwathmey, J. K. (2005). Mentoring in a post-affirmative action world. Journal of Social Issues, 61(3), 449-479.

* Johnson, W. B. (2007). On being a mentor: A guide for higher education faculty. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

* Mathews, P. (2003). Academic monitoring: Enhancing the use of scarce resources. Educational Management and Administration, 31(3), 313-334.

Resource Box II

STUDIES

* Bower, G. G. (2007). Factors influencing the willingness to mentor 1st-year faculty in physical education departments. Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 15(1), 73-85.

* Cawyer, C. S., Simonds, C., & Davis, S. (2002). Mentoring to facilitate socialization: The case of the new faculty member. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 15(2), 225-242.

* Peluchette, J. V. E., & Jeanquart, S. (2000). Professionals’ use of different mentor sources at various stages: Implications for career success. Journal of Social Psychology, 140(5), 549-564.

* Provident, I. M. (2006). Outcomes of selected cases from the American Occupational Therapy Foundation’s curriculum mentoring project. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 60(5), 563-576.

* Schrodt, P., Cawyer, C. S., & Sanders, R. (2003). An examination of academic mentoring behaviors and new faculty members’ satisfaction with socialization and tenure and promotion processes. Communication Education, 52(1), 17-29.

* van Emmerik, I. J. H. (2004). The more you can get the better: Mentoring constellations and intrinsic career success. Career Development International, 9(6/7), 578.

* Wasburn, M. H., & LaLopa, J. M. (2003). Mentoring faculty for success: Recommendations based on evaluations of a program. Planning and Changing, 34(3/4), 250.

* Wilson, P. P., Pereira, A., & Valentine, D. (2002). Perceptions of new social work faculty about mentoring experiences. Journal of Social Work Education, 38(2), 317.

Resource Box III

PROGRAM AND PRACTICES

* Akerlind, G. S., & Quinlan, K. M. (2001). Strengthening collegiality to enhance teaching, research, and scholarly practice: An untapped resource for faculty development. To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional and Organizational Development, 19, 306-321.

* Angelique, H., Kyle, K., & Taylor, E. (2002). Mentors and muses: New strategies for academic success. Innovative Higher Education, 26(3), 95.

* Hardwick, Susan W. (2005). Mentoring early-career faculty in Geography: Issues and Strategies. The Professional Geographer, 57,(1), 21-27.

* Jacelon, C.S., Zucker, D. M., Staccarini, J., Henneman, E.A. (2003). Peer mentoring for tenure-track faculty. Journal of Professional Nursing 19, (6), 335-338.

* Lang, J. M. (2006). Surviving to tenure. To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional and Organizational Development, 25, 39-51.

* Noble, L. (2006). Mentoring from your department chair: Building a valuable relationship. In W. Buskit & S. F. Davis (Eds.), Handbook of the teaching of psychology (pp. 328-332). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

* Northern Arizona University (2007). Colleague-to-Colleague Mentorship Program 2007-08. Retrieved July 7, 2007 from http:// www2.nau.edu/facdev/programs/mentor/Protege.htm

* Pierce, G. (2001). Developing new faculty: An evolving program. To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional and Organizational Development, 19, 253-267.

* Reder, M., & Gallagher, E. V. (2006). Transforming a teaching culture through peer mentoring: Connecticut College’s Johnson teaching seminar for incoming faculty. To Improve the Academy: Resources for Faculty, Instructional and Organizational Development, 25, 327-344.

* Smith, J. O., Whitman, J. S., Grant, P. A., Stanutz, A., Russett, J. A., & Rankin, K. (2001). Peer networking as a dynamic approach to supporting new faculty. Innovative Higher Education, 25(3), 197. * Stortz, M. E. (2005). The seasons of a scholar’s calling: Insights from midfield. Teaching Theology and Religion, 8(1), 24.

* Worley, L. L. M., Borus, J. F., & Hilty, D. M. (2006). Being a good mentor and colleague. In L. W. Roberts & D. M. Hilty (Eds.), Handbook of Career Development in Academic Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. (pp. 293-298). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.

* University of Massachusetts Amherst (2007). Mellon Mutual Mentoring Initiative Program Overview and Proposal Guide. Retrieved July 17, 2007 from http://www.umass.edu/ofd/pguide.html

* University of South Florida (2005). Office of Faculty Development-Mentoring. Retrieved July 7, 2007, from http:// web1.cas.usf.edu/MAIN/contentDisplay.cfm?contentID=172& Family=Y

* University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (2003). Faculty Mentoring Resources. Retrieved July 7, 2007, from http://www.uwosh.edu/ mentoring/faculty/

Resource Box IV

DIVERSITY

* Dixon-Reeves, R. (2003). Mentoring as a precursor to incorporation: An assessment of the mentoring experience of recently minted Ph.D.s. Journal of Black Studies-Special Issue. Race in the Academy: Moving Beyond Diversity and Toward the Incorporation of Faculty of Color in Predominately White Colleges and Universities, 34(1), 12-27.

* Gibson, S. K. (2006). Mentoring of women faculty: The role of organizational politics and culture. Innovative Higher Education, 3(1), 63-79.

* Harley, D. A. (2005). In a different voice: An African- American woman’s experiences in the rehabilitation and higher education realm. Rehabilitation Education-Special Issue: The Role of Women in Rehabilitation Counselor Education, 15(1), 37-45.

* Smith, J. W., Smith, W. J., & Markham, S. E. (2000). Diversity issues in mentoring academic faculty. Journal of Career Development, 26(4), 251.

* Stanley, C., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Cross-race faculty mentoring. Change, 37(2), 44.

* Waitzkin, H., Yager, J., & Parker, T. (2006). Mentoring partnerships for minority faculty and graduate students in mental health services research. Academic Psychiatry, 30(3), 205-217.

* Wasburn, M. H. (2007). Mentoring women faculty: An instrumental case study of strategic collaboration. Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 15(1), 57-72.

* University of Wisconsin-Madison (2006). Women Faculty Mentoring Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Retrieved on July 7, 2007, from http://www.provost.wisc. edu/women/mentor.html

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