Mentoring is important for the recruitment and retention of qualified nurse faculty, their ongoing career development, and leadership development. However, what are current best practices of mentoring? The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a model for excellence in establishing a formal mentoring program for academic nurse educators. Six themes for establishing a formal mentoring program are presented, highlighting best practices in mentoring as culled from experience and the literature. Themes reflect aims to achieve appropriately matched dyads, establish clear mentorship purpose and goals, solidify the dyad relationship, advocate for and guide the protégé, integrate the protégé into the academic culture, and mobilize institutional resources for mentoring support. Attending to the six themes will help mentors achieve important protégé outcomes, such as orientation to the educator role, integration into the academic community, development of teaching, scholarship, and service skills, as well as leadership development. The model is intended to be generalizable for faculty teaching in a variety of academic nursing institution types and sizes. Mentoring that integrates the six themes assists faculty members to better navigate the academic environment and more easily transition to new roles and responsibilities.

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In the context of the UK public policy goal to increase community and social cohesion, this paper explores the nature of local 'bridge-building'; activities intended to increase inter-personal contacts between diverse ethnic, faith and nationality groups. We draw on earlier research in a range of fields to develop the bridge-building concept and present findings from a study which identified community-level projects with bridge-building as a specific aim. We show the range of groupings involved, the activities encompassed and their organisational features. We consider the actual and potential contribution of local bridge-building to cohesion in the light of earlier research and our own study. Key Wordscohesion; bridge-building; ethnicity; faith, immigration IntroductionIn the context of an increasingly diverse population and amid politicians' concerns about the implications of diversity for solidarity, trust and civil society (Attwood et al, 2001;Pennant, 2005), there has been a public policy drive in the UK to build social and community 'cohesion' ( Burnett, 2007;Cantle, 2001;DCLG, 2006;Gilchrist, 2004). The ideological and practical assumptions underpinning the cohesion agenda continue to be fiercely debated by academics and activists (Bagguley and Hussain, 2008;Flint, 2007;Flint and Robinson, 2008;McGhee, 2003).Nevertheless, the trend of recent policy is clear: established ideas of encouraging respect for difference (often referred to as 'multiculturalism) are now seen as needing to be complemented by policies which actively encourage interaction and mutual accommodation across identity group boundaries (Cheong et al, 2007;Denham, 2002;Modood, 2007;Watson, 2000). There has been a particular focus on increasing inter-personal relationships between people of different faiths, ethnicity and country of origin and on encouraging them to work together to develop shared values and achieve common goals (CIC, 2007;Faulkner, 2004; HM Treasury, 2007). This paper explores the extent are which these policy goals are implementable. To what extent do 3 they accord with research knowledge about how people in a diverse society behave collectively at the grassroots in their streets and neighbourhoods?Although some research attention has been given to 'peace and reconciliation' education and similar initiatives at national and international levels (Acheson et al, 2006; Gidron et al, 1999;Salomon and Nevo, 2002), and although 'inter-faith dialogue' as one particular cross-group activity is widely advocated (Holden, 2006), there are two areas in which research is still sparse. First, activities which cross identity group boundaries at the 'grassroots' level have been given very little research attention; even though many public policies assume their existence (DCLG, 2006;DCLG, 2008; Home Office, 2004; IDeA, 2006) Schachter, 1992). Studies have generally not addressed directly the fact that, in the UK as in many other countries, there are complex overlaps between ethnic, nationality and faith groupings (Barekh, 2000;Modo...