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College Teaching
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Faculty Mentorship At Colleges And Universities
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Hallie E. Savage , Rashelle S. Karp & Rose Logue
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Clarion University of Pennsylvania senate
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To cite this article: Hallie E. Savage, Rashelle S. Karp & Rose Logue (2004): Faculty Mentorship At Colleges And Universities,
College Teaching, 52:1, 21-24
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FACULTY MENTORSHIP AT
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES
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Hallie E. Savage, Rashelle S. Karp, and Rose Logue
Abstract. Mentoring is a process in which one person, usually of superior rank and outstanding achievement, guides the development of an entry-level individual. Colleges and universities historically have had
new faculty orientation programs and methods to support new faculty matriculation. Mentorship programs,
if well developed, can integrate new faculty into the
university community and are characteristic of good
educational practice. This article provides a rationale
for, as well as features and benefits of, a new faculty
mentorship program at a comprehensive university.
D
ocumented feelings of isolation by
novice faculty, coupled with the
demise of faculty clubs, have led to
renewed interest in mentoring as an effective method of induction for new university faculty. Although mentoring programs
frequently are adopted, the effectiveness of
the programs has been neither studied nor
described. In addition, because of economic constraints within higher education, new
faculty are faced with increased teaching
and advising responsibilities while they
also are dealing with rapid technological
changes. Universities must provide new
tenure-track and temporary faculty with a
broad information base regarding a university’s policy and culture, as well as
effective mechanisms for structuring faculty collaboration within the university
community. In this article, we provide a
historical perspective on integrating new
faculty into the university community and
a definition of mentoring that was developed at one university as a model for subsequent mentor programming.
Hallie E. Savage is the honors program director and
vice chair of the faculty senate, Rashelle S. Karp is
the associate vice president for academic affairs,
and Rose Logue is an administrative assistant for
academic affairs, all at Clarion University of
Pennsylvania.
Faculty clubs at colleges and universities traditionally have functioned as meeting places to promote interdepartmental
collegiality, intra-institutional collaboration and cohesiveness, and esprit de
Vol. 52/ No. 1
Review of the Literature
corps. In addition, faculty clubs have
served as a common social ground for
stimulating scholarly interchange. Over
the years, however, faculty club membership has declined, as has the number of
university facilities dedicated to faculty
clubs (Schneider 1997). Perhaps contributing to this trend has been the perception that instead of engendering scholarship, faculty clubs were predominantly
social and, therefore, not important or relevant to today’s faculty. Although more
senior professors argue that collegiality
and cohesiveness are being lost without a
common meeting ground, younger scholars argue that their own research agendas
are more important than gaining general
social acceptance by the university community. As a result, faculty clubs have
become relics in most modern university
communities, even as the desire to make
meaningful connections among scholars
becomes more critical.
Interestingly, and perhaps causally, the
national decline of faculty clubs has
taken place during a time when electronic communication is facilitating more
options for scholarly communications
and activities outside of a socially based
context. For example, electronic communication and the Internet have provided
geographically and disciplinarily disparate faculty with resources to pursue
grants, do collaborative research, and
obtain scholarly support.
For some, it seems that “in an era of
faxes and email, professors often feel
21
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greater allegiance to fellow specialists
across the country than to their colleagues down the hall” (Schneider 1997,
A13). Reinforcing this view are reports
from novice faculty that they often experience “isolation, separation, fragmentation, loneliness, competition, and sometimes incivility” at their own institutions,
thus forcing them to go outside campus
for support from a community of scholars
that they have not found in their home
departments or institutions (Rice, Sorcinelli, and Austin 2000, 13).
From a more global view of this sense
of collegiality, Naisbitt and Aburdene have
suggested that our society is “drowning in
information but starved for knowledge”
(1990, 12). They further argue that what is
introduced to society through technology
must be counterbalanced by a type of
human response they call “high touch”
(304). “High touch” provides a human
lens through which to evaluate technology, causing individuals to embrace technology that preserves humanness and to
reject technology that intrudes upon it
(Naisbitt, Naisbitt, and Phillips 1999).
The application of this concept to higher education suggests that in addition to
technologically mediated intellectual connections among faceless scholars, personal
connections also must be present. The tempering effect of “high touch” also would
seem critical as a catalyst for the development of what has been identified by
researchers as an “integrated life” for faculty (Rice, Sorcinelli, and Austin 2000, 8).
Mentoring has been defined as a
process in which one person, usually of
superior rank and outstanding achievement, guides the development of an
entry-level individual seen as the protégé
or mentee (Carmin 1988; Gerstein 1985;
Gehrke 1988; Nankivell 1997). Once
common at colleges and universities,
mentoring, like faculty clubs, began to
decline in the 1950s, as
new Ph.D.’s were arriving not merely
apprehensive but deeply suspicious of
authoritarian structures. With increasing
frequency, young faculty were substantially
different from their senior colleagues in
gender, race, religion, training, or background and upbringing. . . . Suspecting that
they were regarded as retrograde, some
senior professors prudently retreated;
reluctant to intervene, many abandoned
their responsibility to teach younger teach22
ers. Essentially, this dynamic interrupted
the traditions of mentoring, and as those
junior faculty moved to more senior positions, they in turn abdicated their responsibility for training and supporting the new
junior faculty. (Bell 1999, 448)
Another obstacle to mentoring was
found in the models themselves, through
which new faculty were paired with
senior tenured faculty. This traditional
model of mentoring has been criticized as
a “power relationship whereby the mentor is older and wiser, tenured and with
rank; and holds all the power. . . . These
mentoring relationships are not collaborative, or communal but rather, hierarchical in nature” (Rodriguez and Sjostrom
2000, 9). As some researchers have pointed out, senior faculty at most academic
institutions are more likely to be male
(Madison and Huston 1996) and therefore potentially less helpful to new
female faculty. Within the literature,
authors indicate a preference among new
faculty members for senior faculty mentors from departments other than the new
faculty members’ departments, because
these mentors will not be judging them
for promotion and tenure (Sands, Parson,
and Duane 1991). However, the need for
mentoring from within a new faculty
member’s department is well documented
by Herr (1994) and by Rice, Sorcinelli,
and Austin (2000). These researchers
stress the need of new faculty for support,
especially in the areas of pedagogy within a specific discipline, identification of
levels of importance assigned within the
departmental culture to specific professional organizations, and learning the
subculture of the department.
Related to issues of pairing new faculty with senior faculty who are perceived
as more intimidating than encouraging
has been the issue of whether, and to what
degree, part-time or adjunct faculty
should be included in faculty mentoring
programs. Commenting on the quality of
life issues faced by adjunct professors,
Karen Thompson (head of the union at
Rutgers University at New Brunswick)
would seem to defend the need to include
adjunct faculty in mentoring programs
when she indicates that “[t]he importance
of the conditions of [temporary] teaching
personnel is of the utmost because those
are also the learning conditions of the stu-
dents” (Cox 2000, 12). Other researchers
highlight the special mentoring needs of
temporary faculty who, despite their
strong academic credentials that enhance
an institution (Millis 1994), feel a need
for a sense of collegiality, community,
and value (Tal 1999).
Departmental and institutional neglect
of new university faculty members for the
first two or three years of their career
(Leon 1997) and the erosion of a mentoring philosophy (Kuo 2000) have created
“barriers of isolation” for new faculty
(Hulig-Austin 1990). Those feelings of
isolation were first documented in the
early 1980s through research by concerned
professionals (Boice 1992; Menges 1999;
Sorcinelli and Austin 1992; Tierney and
Bensimon 1996; Austin and Fraser 1999;
Nyquist et al. 1999). The studies suggested that although new faculty enter the profession with an idealistic vision of freedom, autonomy, and opportunities for
intellectual discovery and growth, this
vision does not fully match what they
actually experience over time (Rice, Sorcinelli, and Austin 2000).
Effective mentoring programs that
pay attention to three primary components of the mentoring process—career
development, psychosocial issues, and
modeling—can help mediate the transition from vision to reality (Schwiebert
2000). Mentoring programs in higher
education provide an opportunity to cultivate human interactions based on respect,
integrity, perseverance, and trust (Bey
and Hope-King 1995). The programs also
provide basic information regarding
resources, assistance, and support for
teaching and advisement, and cross-disciplinary collaboration and discussion.
Mentoring programs build, foster, and
sustain “a community of teachers and a
culture of teaching that are both means to
multiple ends and invaluable ends themselves” (Bell 1999, 448).
A Definition of Mentoring
at a Comprehensive University
Research that estimates the number of
new faculty mentoring programs is not
available. In addition, research describing
models that have been implemented is
scarce. At our university, mentor programming begins with the premise that it must
be faculty driven and administratively
COLLEGE TEACHING
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supported. The overarching purpose of
the mentoring program is to introduce
new faculty to senior cross-disciplinary
faculty, provide new faculty with information about on-campus resources, and
promote interdepartmental discussion and
collegiality (Heller and Sindelar 1991).
Drawing from the literature, which indicates that if mentoring partners have
extremely precise expectations of each
other, they may not reap the full benefits
of a mentoring program (Bullington and
Boylston 2001; Goodwin, Stevens, and
Bellamy 1998), mentoring at our university is flexible and can accommodate individual preferences. The program begins
with new faculty orientation and continues through the first year of a faculty
member’s teaching experience. The
advantage of this model is the creation of
faculty communicative channels that are
supported longitudinally.
The goals of the mentoring program at
our university are
1. to empower new and continuing faculty by supporting their professional
growth and renewal (Boice 1992);
2. to promote faculty satisfaction
(Menges 1999) through what has been
described in recent literature as a
dialectical relationship (Kaye 2000)
with peers and senior faculty that can
foster a sense of community;
3. to attract, retain, and facilitate promotion of new faculty (Luna and Cullen
1995; Kirk 1992) by thoroughly
explaining the university’s tenure and
promotion systems (Rice 1996) and by
introducing new faculty to unique
organizational cultures and definitions
of work responsibilities;
4. to provide opportunities for interactions
between junior and senior faculty to
facilitate mutual respect and avoid counterproductive divisions between old and
young professors (Magner 1999);
5. to meet “entry level survival needs” of
new faculty by providing information
about departmental and university
sociopolitical culture (Johnsrud 1994);
and
6. to assist new faculty members to
“begin to develop, and balance, their
commitments to . . . research and teaching” (Jackson and Simpson 1994).
Vol. 52/No. 1
Alumni of the university’s faculty mentoring program from the past five years
have confirmed that the goals of the program match their needs, especially in the
primary areas of academic advising, using
the university’s instructional electronic
infrastructures (for example, e-mail,
library resources, and instructional technologies), using the university’s electronic administrative systems, and pedagogy.
The Future of Mentoring
Programs at Colleges
and Universities
The evidence and critical need for faculty mentoring has longstanding support
in higher education research. Recently,
the American Association for Higher
Education indicated that “good practice
[at colleges and universities] encourages
mentoring by senior faculty” (Sorcinelli
2000). Sorcinelli outlines strategies that
include faculty contacts over a shared
meal; recognizing senior faculty for the
time that they spend mentoring junior
colleagues; creating opportunities for
junior and senior faculty to work together
(for example, grant writing and collaborative teaching); encouraging new faculty
to be proactive about making connections
with senior colleagues; sharing teaching
insights and creating mechanisms to support informal discussions about issues of
teaching and learning; helping new faculty identify institutional resources that will
help with grant writing and teaching; supporting a view of scholarship that
includes the scholarship of teaching as
well as applied research within a specific
discipline; and helping new faculty create
a balance between professional and personal life, especially for women faculty
and faculty of color.
Key words: mentoring, faculty mentoring
NOTE
Readers who are interested in a description of the successful mentoring program at
our institution are invited to e-mail Hallie
Savage ([email protected]), Rashelle S.
Karp ([email protected]), or Rose Logue
([email protected]).
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