Mentoring, Advocacy, and Leadership: Revisiting First-Year Student Advocate Award Recipients

Abstract

This study revisited the characteristics and strategies employed by a group of award-winning campus leaders who were effective change agents on behalf of students. The investigators were provided with a unique opportunity to survey faculty, professional staff, and administrators who accrued a record of successful interventions on behalf of students. Little attention has been paid to the professional and leadership attributes of individuals who created these interventions and to the mentoring, advocacy, organizational skills, and dynamics they brought to the program-creation process (EckelBuilding on the earlier research of Anttonen and Chaskes (2002), the present study sought to examine mentoring, the number one process highlighted by past Advocates, in the learning of advocacy skills. Beginning in the 1989-1990 academic year, the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition has conferred the "Outstanding First-Year Student Advocate Award" eachyear upon 10 to 13 college and university personnel who have developed programs to improve the educational experience of students. These award recipients' accomplishments encompass a wide range of post-secondary institutional types: public and private, large and small, 2-and 4-year colleges as well as research universities. The first-year experience programs vary in scope and scale of operation and include advising and career counseling, orientation and extended orientation programs, faculty and/or peer mentoring, residence life, and academically based seminars. What all these efforts shared in common was a record of outstanding leadership and effective institutional change. Shannon, 1988). The study explored Advocate characteristics such as: years of higher education experience, educational background, degree attainment, and types of institutions. Also, and perhaps more importantly, the research sought to gather data concerning Advocates' perceptions of their own mentoring histories and whether they passed these skills to the next generation of Advocates. In addition, the study attempted to explore whether the Anttonen & Chaskes Skill Set (2005)-which included passion and caring for students, active listen- Kram' s hierarchy (1985) of mentoring functions was utilized as the framework for functions conducted by the mentors (Anderson & 433Brought to you by | HEC Bibliotheque Maryriam ET J. Authenticated Download Date | 6/9/15 1:54 PM lectual strengths and career commitments. A mentor is one who engenders trust, presents challenges, encourages, and offers a vision. Most importantly, however, a mentor is one who has successfully taken the journey (Daloz, 1999). We hope that the First-Year Advocate Award Recipients, both mentors and protégés, successfully continue their journey. ReferencesAllen, T. D., Poteet, M. L., & Burroughs, S. M. (1997). The mentor' s perspective: A qualitative inquiry and future research agenda. . The impact of mentoring and collegial support on faculty success: An analysis of support behavior, information adequacy, a...