Georgia Institute of Technology Equity, Diversity, and Excellence Initiative

Types of Mentoring Relationships

One on One Mentoring

• Mentor has more experience, directly guides and teaches behavior.
• Mentor knowledgeable about the junior faculty member’s department and reviews the activities and career trajectory of the junior faculty mentee.
• Mentor provides critical feedback and direct guidance during the years preceding tenure and promotion reviews.
• Mentor provides personal council regarding issues that junior faculty may feel hesitant to discuss in group settings.¹

Group Mentoring

• One or small number of mentors with a medium group of mentees.
• Benefits multiple individuals simultaneously.
• Mentoring sessions led by one or several senior faculty members in the format of a community conversation.
  
  •  General topics that can be discussed include but are not limited to:
    • Guidelines on promotion and tenure
    • Curriculum enhancement
    • Assessments of teaching and instruction
    • Time management²

Peer Advising

• Mutual relationships between individuals of the same career level.
• All members give and receive support.
• Everyone simultaneously benefiting from the relationship and learns how to be a faculty mentor³
• Offer support to one another in the following areas:
  
  • Guidance in the preparation of annual departmental reports.
  • Disseminating information about funding opportunities, awards and institutional policies pertaining to junior faculty.
  • Sharing progress.
  • Provide experiential support and guidance regarding the professional skills that must be demonstrated for tenure and promotion.

Traditional vs. Alternative Mentoring Models

Traditional Mentoring Model

In the sciences and engineering, the mentoring of both younger men and women generally is based on a cultural style more suited to male socialization that entails:

• Informational and technical conversation.
• A predominantly instrumental approach to education, contrasted with an affective orientation.
• Focus on challenging the mentee, posing tasks in order to increase stress tolerance, independence and potentially identifying those who cannot rise to the challenge

*The traditional mentoring model that emphasizes technical and instrumental issues is often well suited to the needs of traditionally socialized men in these fields. It does not necessarily accommodate an affinity towards integration and other paradigms of nurturing in which most women are socialized.⁴

Alternative Mentoring Models

Multiple Mentoring

• Distributed mentorship- junior faculty are encouraged to construct a mentoring community based on a diversified support group instead of relying on a single mentor.
• By having a team of mentors, each mentor supplements the relative strengths of the other mentors, including access to a particular network.

*Multiple mentoring helps mentees cultivate relationships internally and externally and helps to reduce competition-laden hierarchal relationships that often stymie the progress of historically underrepresented groups in STEM.⁵

Peer Mentoring

• Builds community and de-emphasizes seniority and hierarchy.
• Encourages support across boundaries and disciplines.
• Flexibility and informality of relationships that enable women to phase in and phase out.

*This flexibility in time and level of commitment in peer mentoring relationships addresses problems women often experience with the traditional mentoring model (e.g. family and child-care responsibilities and career interruptions).⁶

Collective Mentoring

• Senior colleagues and the department take the lead constructing and maintaining a mentoring team.
• Mentoring is neither a one-on-one activity, nor one designed solely by the junior faculty member.

*Sends departmental and institutional message that the progress of historically underrepresent faculty is a priority and creates a departmental climate that removes the obstacles to effective mentoring, performance, retention and advancement of historically underrepresented STEM faculty.⁷

Suggestions for Pairing Mentors and Mentees

Gender and Race Considerations

Cross race and cross gender relationships have benefits for minority and women faculty. However, differences in gender and culture can limit the positive outgrowth of mentoring relationships if the majority mentor(s) are not sensitive to these differences and specific challenges and how they mediate the lived experiences of their mentees in academe.⁸ In the literature, there is notable discussion about the impact that gender and race have on mentoring.  Ragins' (1997) framework on diverse mentoring relationships posits that the demographic constitution of a mentoring relationship affects the nature of assistance provided by the mentor(s).

Other researchers have found that female mentees who are historically represented in STEM fields experience greater levels of comfort and psychosocial support from female mentors than male mentors.⁹

Several challenges exist for women and faculty of color. They tend to have fewer opportunities to establish contact with potential mentors because of a lack of access to informal information networks. Perceptions exist that women and faculty of color earn positions and promotions not because of their abilities and achievements, but because of a quota system. In addition, negative stereotypes and attitudes about women in leadership positions can influence how mentors view them. Additionally, women’s socialization to downplay their successes may discourage mentors from taking them on as mentees.¹⁰

Specific challenges for women and faculty of color:

• Pigeonholed/stereotyped,
• Unusual demands for service on committees and mentoring of historically underrepresented students which may impact productivity.
• Sense of heightened responsibility as a visible minority.
• Childcare responsibilities.
• Reluctance to seek out mentors out of fear that may be seen as too dependent.

Create Expectations and Incentives for Mentoring at the Department Level¹¹

• Give awards and departmental recognition to senior faculty mentors (e.g. increase graduate assistance support, increases in pay, seeding resources for grants and projects, reduce  teaching load, provide sabbatical time as compensation). 

• Institute junior faculty mentoring as an important aspect of service and performance criteria in reviews and evaluations of senior faculty, academic program administrators and department heads.

1. Dalox, 1987; Evans, 1995.
2. Roth, 2000; Seibert, 1999.
3. Mayer et al, 2008.
4. Broome, 1996, Broome, 1997; Baum, 1995; Chesler & Chesler, 2002; Seymor, 1995.
5. Chesler and Chesler, 2002; Chandler, 1996; Etkowitz, Kemelgor, & Uzzi, 2000.
6. Chesler & Chesler, 2002; Chandler, 1996; Limbert, 1995.
7. Chesler & Chesler, 2002; Seymour & Hewitt, 1997.
8. Boice, 1992; Welch, 1997; Tilman, 2001.
9. Allen, Day, & Lentz; 2005, Ensher & Murphy, 1997, Fox & Fonesca, 2006; Kark & Shilo-Dubnov, 2007; Lookwood, 2006.
10. Cleveland, Stockdale, & Murphy, 2000.
11. Adapted from “Suggested topics of Discussion for Mentor/Mentee Pairs,” NYU Steinhardt, 2013.