Advancing Gerontology through Exceptional Scholarship (AGES): a Mentorship Initiative for Early Career Faculty

Abstract

Mentorship is critical to supporting professional develop-ment and growth of new and emerging faculty members. Working with the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), we created the Advancing Gerontology through Exceptional Scholarship (AGES) Initiative as a mentorship model to pro-mote productivity and peer support for new and early career faculty members. In this commentary, we highlight the AGES Program as a prototype to facilitate peer support, collective learning, and co-authorship opportunities to advance new and early career faculty members, especially in the field of aging. Moreover, we identify four crucial strategies that cultivated and refined our AGES Program including: i) ensuring flexibility to address mentee needs; ii) establishing check-ins and accountability to enhance productivity; iii) fostering peer support and collective learning; and iv) delivering motivational and educational activities. Drawing on our experience with the AGES Program, this commentary provides recommendations to support other groups looking to develop high-quality mentorship programs to support new and early career faculty members in academia.