This article is a literature review of mentoring and higher education academic literature from 2008-2018. The review analyzed what makes an effective mentor and what are the implications of practice for those strategies. This article is for higher education leaders, mentoring programs, and mentors who want to improve their traditional and online mentoring programs and mentoring practices. After narrowing the search terms, the researcher searched EBSCO and ERIC databases and this search produced a combined total of 256 results. These articles were further narrowed to 34 articles that met the keyword search and exclusion criteria. The remaining articles are the focus of the literature review analysis for mentoring and higher education literature.             The review produced three major themes of impact of mentoring, role of mentor, and mentoring programs, as well as implications for practice for each theme. The researcher further examined the themes in detail and provided information about retention, persistence, long-term benefits of mentoring, student interaction, student support, role models, types of mentoring programs, platforms for mentoring, and mentor training. The review concludes with suggestions for further research, including recommendations for mentor training and online mentoring.

This survey research study analyzed responses from 143 mentors from around the world participating in a global higher education initiative. Results confirmed the effectiveness of four mentoring domains identified in the literature, reporting the most success from providing emotional and psychological support for students. This article provides mentoring strategies including student goal setting, identifies characteristics of an online role model, and shows the importance of online mentors’ confidence in students gaining technology skills. The study has additionally contributed to the literature supporting (a) benefits of online mentoring for nontraditional students, (b) influence of technology on mentoring challenges, and (c) role assumption in online mentoring. Additionally, the study provided a literature review of the background of online mentoring and mentoring practices, the benefits and challenges of online mentoring, and lessons learned from research. This work presents a comprehensive understanding of online mentoring, providing support for mentors seeking to improve their performance as well as recommendations for creating mentoring programs to improve organizations.