Faculty mentoring and networking are fundamental to career success, experts emphasized at a recent symposium hosted by Boston University Women in Science and Engineering (BU WISE) and the Boston University Women’s Studies Program.
Panelists examined the theory and practice of faculty mentoring and networking, highlighting strategies and programs that have proven successful in increasing advancement and retention, particularly in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. CAS Dean Virginia Sapiro reflected on the panelists’ comments, shared personal experiences with the mentoring practice during her career, and discussed the challenges of building a mentoring program at BU.
Mentoring doesn’t’ happen simply because someone says it should, said Abigail Stewart, Sandra Schwartz Tangri Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan. “You can’t legislate it; you can’t just make it happen,” she said, noting the importance of getting chairs to engage in mentoring. “Chairs must be responsible and should be held accountable to make sure it happens. This creates support for everything else.”
Stewart emphasized that good mentoring requires developing a strong two-way relationship between the mentor and the person being mentored. She noted that senior faculty often avoid this more involved practice of mentoring, preferring just to be available to answer specific questions because the stronger version leads to a greater sense of responsibility. “It’s a risky proposition and people feel it’s easier not to get involved,“ she said. “We need to make it clear they’re not responsible for the outcome.”
Moreover, Stewart said, it is important for institutions developing a mentoring program to support the process by carefully defining the expectations for the institution, academic leaders, and the partners in the mentoring process. Her own institution, the University of Michigan, developed a detailed guide to mentoring, “Giving and Getting Career Advice: A Guide for Junior and Senior Faculty.” It emphasizes that both the junior and senior partners have responsibilities in mentoring. Junior faculty should be active in seeking assistance and not just depend on one assigned mentor. “Recognize the breadth of people who can provide examples,” Stewart said.
Susan Staffin Metz, senior advisor of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education, who focuses her research on STEM fields, noted that the “culture of mentoring” developed more slowly in some fields like engineering than in others. Many successful scientists learned not to attribute any of their success to the help they received, and pass on their view that success in the sciences is due simply to one’s abilities and effort. In fact, however, favorite students and junior faculty have long received help. This poses special difficulties for the small number of women in engineering and the sciences, who have traditionally been excluded from this mentoring.
“We need to include student-faculty mentoring, “Metz said. “With the small percentage of women in the engineering discipline, they rely on this connection because of an isolating, lonely environment that undermines student’s confidence. Validation makes a difference.”
Lotte Bailyn, professor of management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, pointed out that activity outside the university is just as important as internal efforts. “Beyond mentoring relationships, it’s a good idea to establish other relationships of support and information sharing,” she said.
Reflecting on the comments of Stewart, Metz, and Bailyn, Dean Sapiro stressed the importance of peer mentoring, noting that she benefitted from a tradition among people who received Ph.D.s in political science from the University of Michigan in which “one generation took care of another,” especially at professional conferences where they met, socialized with each other, and shared the contacts they had developed. “All of the puppies looked after each other and introduced each other to the big dogs they knew,” she said.
She also stressed the importance of being clear about balancing a common set of institutional expectations, norms, and processes with a recognition that good mentoring also depends on the differing experiences, needs, and styles of the partners. “People bring different styles of learning and teaching,” she said.
Sapiro also pointed to the importance of being aware of different needs that may depend on, for example, gender or race. Moreover, she said, to have a “culture of mentoring” rather than just particular programs, mentoring must exist at all levels. “This would require a recognition of mentoring needs of more senior faculty, administrators, and non-tenure-track faculty,” she said.
Sapiro has already made major efforts to build a mentoring program in CAS for tenure-track faculty and a culture of mentoring that includes attention to the needs of senior faculty and department chairs. As of fall 2008, departments must assign a mentor to all tenure-track faculty. Sapiro collected and circulated descriptions of mentoring programs from all departments that have them, and will be leading efforts to define a common set of expectations and processes for CAS. She holds annual orientations for new and continuing chairs and directors, and has encouraged the development of strong ties among chairs and directors to facilitate sharing of knowledge and practices.
Sapiro added that she wants to address the twin needs of developing a culture of mentoring on a College-wide basis and the craft of mentoring at the individual level. “We don’t yet have a culture of mentoring; we have rules and practices,” she said. “The academic community needs multiple mentoring, building the knowledge and craft of mentoring just as we build the craft of teaching and research.”
Following the panel that focused on mentoring strategies and programs, a second panel focused on the importance of building an effective mentoring network. Speakers included Mary Deanne Sorcinelli and Yung Yun of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Sorcinelli is associate provost for faculty development and a professor in the Department of Educational Policy, Research, and Administration, and Yun is a lecturers and the director of new faculty initiatives in the Office of Faculty Development.
Mentoring is key to addressing roadblocks such as getting oriented, increasing skills, navigating the tenure track, developing professional networks, and creating a work/life balance, they pointed out. Moreover, mentoring has been proven to be one of the few common characteristics of a successful academic career, particularly for women and faculty of color.
“People who advance the most have strong networks of support,” Sorcinelli said.
The University of Massachusetts team contrasted traditional mentoring—a one-on-one hierarchal relationship in which a senior faculty member takes a junior faculty member under his or her wing—with mutual mentoring, a network-based model of support that addresses specific areas of knowledge and expertise. “This constellation becomes your best mentor,” Sorcinelli said. “All members of an academic community have something to learn from one another.”
To access additional resources from the symposium and elsewhere about faculty mentoring and networking, visit www.bu.edu/win and click on “Resources” at the upper right-hand side of the screen.