How Mentor Identity Evolves: Findings From a 10-Year Follow-up Study of a National Professional Development Program

Abstract

The Educational Scholars Program's implicit curriculum facilitated faculty-participants taking on mentor identity via opportunities it afforded to watch mentors, experiment with mentoring, and evaluate self as mentor, key ingredients for identity construction. Leaders of professional development programs can develop faculty as mentors by capitalizing on what faculty-participants learn in the implicit curriculum and deliberately structuring postgraduation mentoring opportunities.

Advancing the Science of Mentorship: Future Directions for Sustainable Implementation and Evaluation of Mentorship Education for the Clinical and Translational Science Workforce

“…Dr Lewis’s areas of professional interest include mentoring, leadership coaching, equity, diversity, and inclusion in healthcare. Dr Lewis delivered the opening plenary session: “Identity as a Mentor is Key to Diversifying the Clinical Translational Workforce.” Dr Lewis drew on the 2023 NASEM report, Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in STEMM Organizations: Beyond Broadening Participation [ 9 ] to illustrate the critical role that both sociocultural and mentor identities play in advancing anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEMM organizations and discussed research [ 10 ] on how mentor identity evolves and is shaped by personal and professional contexts. Dr Lewis highlighted the merits of the Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM®), a leadership development program, where senior women leaders in academic health sciences engage in project work that shapes their leadership identities [ 11 ] She highlighted how mentor identities are necessarily connected to social, professional, and individual identities and are impacted by organizational and institutional contexts (e.g., CTSA hub, department, and institution).…”

Mentors’ Beliefs About Their Roles in Health Care Education: A Qualitative Study of Mentors’ Personal Interpretative Framework

“…Because there is a paucity of studies of the personal beliefs of mentors in health professions education, 6 we know little about the content of these beliefs and how they bear on the way mentors develop and enact their approaches to mentoring. Inspired by Kelchtermans’ “Who I am in how I teach is the message,” 10 we set out to identify how mentors’ “self” 11 shows in their mentoring. More specifically, this research aims to contribute to the development of theory on mentoring and mentoring beliefs, 6 thereby taking into account the complexity of the work as well as its idiosyncratic and contextualized nature.…”

“…The mere act of thinking about what they do, how they do this, and why they do it this way may itself foster development. 11 , 14 , 15 Second, it may allow training to be personalized because beliefs can be incorporated in mentor training programs, for example, through role-plays, individualized coaching, or by using cases from the mentors’ workplace. 21 …”