15: Team Mentoring: An Alternative Way to Mentor New Faculty

Abstract

Traditional mentoring programs usually have no mechanism for protégés to learn from each other, and they often match protégés with mentors sight unseen. Team mentoring is a less hierarchical program in which protégés mentor each other in a group while searching for more permanent and personal mentors. In this program, protégés and mentors are arguably better matched because mentors are chosen by the protégés. In addition, protégés benefit by tapping into the wisdom of their peers. As a result, team mentoring is a viable alternative to traditional mentoring programs.

3: A Conceptual Framework for Higher Education Faculty Mentoring

“…Certain people, groups, and institutions are intended beneficiaries of faculty mentoring (see Figure 3.1). Mentees, who are usually junior faculty members, are the primary intended beneficiaries (Gray & Birch, 2007;Luckhaupt et aI., 2005;Schrodt, Cawyer, & Sanders, 2003). Statements about providing "support [for) new faculty" (Reder & Gallagher, 2007, p. 327) are common in descriptions of the purposes of mentoring.…”

“…There is considerable variation within this generalization. In some cases participants and adm inistrators co-initiate and co-manage mentoring (Gray & Birch, 2007;Mundt, 2001). Other mentoring programs are so highly structured that they resemble administered faculty development programs (Morzinski, 2005).…”

“…Group mentoring occurs when many faculty members come together to form a mentoring community. Most often this involves junior faculty helping one another as peer mentors (Gammack et aI., 2004;Gray & Birch, 2007;Waitzkin, Yager, Parker, & Duran, 2006), but it also includes groups of senior and junior faculty members (Cox, 1997;Lemel & Sullivan-Catlin, 2000). Group mentoring occurs as a stand-alone approach (Green & King, 2002) and in combination with mentor-mentee pairs (Fayne & Ortquist-Ahrens, 2006).…”

“…INS1TIUI10NAL CONTEXT. Most mentoring programs are interdepartmental (Fong, 2000;Lemel & Sullivan-Catlin, 2000;Reder & Gallagher, 2007) or include both intra-and interdepartmental relationships (Cox, 1997;Gray & Birch, 2007;Hardwick, 2005). Although many faculty members encounter intradepartmental mentoring, few exclusively intradepartmental programs are described in the literature we examined (Tracy et aI., 2004).…”

“…In the literature we reviewed, the most important topics (see Figure 3.4) for mentors and mentees to address are how to balance research, teaching, and service; and how to navigate the politics and procedures of academia on the way to promotion and tenure (Angelique et aI., 2002;Benson et al, Gray & Birch, 2007). Some faculty mentoring programs focus more on teaching (Chism, Fraser, & Arnold, 1996;Golding & Gray, 2002;Reder & Gallagher, 2007) or research (Jacelon et aI., 2003;Mundt, 2001;Waitzkin et aI., 2006).…”