Mentoring Models

Colleagues within a department/unit or professional network can serve as mentors as part of the culture and core expectations for how members interact with each other. Leaders build this culture by overtly recognizing and supporting ways that colleagues facilitate the personal and professional development of members. It recognizes that for each person, different mentors can play different, critical roles at different times. Communicator, advisor, coach, broker, advocate, and often a combination of each of these.

When mentoring arrangements are informal, it can be difficult to ensure that each person is getting what they need, especially when people are new to the unit or taking on a new role. Even in units where a culture of mentoring is in place, formal arrangements facilitated by the unit can be useful at these critical times.

The traditional mentor/mentee dyad mentoring model is a top-down model in which a single senior academic is assigned to mentor an individual early in their career. At one time, this model was the dominant model in academia and several other fields, but contemporary thinking identifies the many limitations of this model and encourages multiple mentors within a network or community to mitigate these limitations. However, particularly as new members of a unit or community make the significant transition in joining that community, assigning a single initial mentor of which any question can be asked can help the individual find what they need in the early stages, before they are integrated into the community and can build their local network of mentors and colleagues.

When a dyadic model is employed by a unit in its formal mentoring program, the facilitator of the mentor arrangements must help both parties understand expectations for confidentiality and think about the potential for conflict of interest. Ideally, the mentor would not also serve as a supervisor or on a committee that will formally review the mentee. If it is unavoidable, the mentee should be clearly informed of the mentor’s dual role. The extent to which the mentor will be reporting to any reviewers should be explicitly stated at the first meeting.
 

Ideally, the initial formal mentoring support arranged by a unit should assign each individual multiple formal mentors for different roles, with at least one that doesn’t serve in a formal reviewing capacity. This mentor may even be external to the unit, college/major administrative unit (MAU), or university and would therefore not have a conflict of interest. One mentor may be assigned to help support learning and development of teaching, another for research. Even in this situation, mentees should build from their set of assigned formal mentors to establish a mentoring network in which they draw upon the different strengths of each member.

The concept of mentoring networks extends the idea of multiple formally assigned mentors. In this model, individuals bear responsibility to assess their needs, which may change over time, and to strategically establish a diverse network of mentors (formal and informal) who may be drawn from many places (internal and external) and who serve in different roles so that multiple needs are met. 

In some units, the supply of senior academics who have “walked the path” a new member will pursue may be small, or even nonexistent. In these cases, a mutual mentoring model can be used to create a network of support and context for shared learning.  Mutual mentoring is based on the belief that all members of the academic community have something to teach and something to learn from each other. In a mutual mentoring model, academics build a network of support from a variety of mentoring partners including peers, near-peers, senior members seeking “new ideas” from newer members, and perhaps others. They both provide support to their mentoring partners and receive it.  

When a unit employs this model, it can be helpful, especially at first, for the unit leader or a designee to facilitate the dyad, triad, or larger group configuration. When the junior-senior identities in the mentoring relationship are less pronounced, participants can benefit from the unit providing someone to take the lead on arranging and facilitating some meetings, until a cadence that they can sustain themselves is developed by the members.
 

Like mutual mentoring, peer mentoring presumes that all participants have something to learn from each other. The value of creating peer mentoring relationships among those experiencing a similar career transition or seeking a similar goal is building relationships among diverse individuals, creating opportunities for collaboration on projects, and developing camaraderie among members of the community that might not otherwise exist. As with mutual mentoring, a unit can help peer mentoring get off to a good start by providing logistical and facilitation support in the early stages.

Within one’s network of mentors, some individuals may play the specific role of providing career advising. Career advising involves sharing information about career paths and expectations and strategies for achieving career success. These individuals help identify the explicit and tacit markers of career advancement and promotion expected in their unit, MAU or at MSU. They may also help identify paths to leadership or other roles the individual may aspire to. Rather than providing specific learning opportunities in areas of academic work, a career advisor helps to reveal the expectations or possibilities for scholarship, external funding, dissemination, creative activities, entrepreneurship, teaching, mentoring, outreach and engagement, professional and institutional service and leadership, and perhaps other areas valued by the unit. It should be geared to the developmental needs of the individual at their current career stage. 

Virtual mentoring relationships are developed and/or maintained through online media. Such relationships may be developed in person and then maintained virtually via email or video conferencing. Others may begin with email or social media exchanges that eventually lead to meeting in person. The mentoring may even take place entirely through electronic communication. Virtual mentoring makes connecting with nationally and internationally recognized experts, senior academics, and peers much more practical, increasing the number and diversity of mentors available to the mentee. 

In addition to networking within professional organizations and communities, individuals may find use in MentorNet, a resource for locating mentors and developing one-on-one guided mentoring relationships. MentorNet began as a free, membership network for women in engineering and science that matched students, post-docs, and early-career researchers across universities and within industry. Today it facilitates mentoring across a broad set of mentor and mentee roles.

The NCFDD also has excellent mentoring programs and related tools for succeeding in academia. MSU has an institutional license with NCFDD, which makes many of their resources free to anyone with an MSU NetID. The Office of the Provost typically sponsors about 15 individuals each year to participate in the NCFDD’s highly regarded Faculty Success Program.
 

Consider the different strategies used in existing models. Adopt those that are most relevant to you or your unit. Or, adapt them to create a hybrid model that is a good fit with identified needs, challenges, and available resources.