Mentorship matters? To whom?

By Jintong Tang , Katie Heiden-Rootes , Rochelle Smith

Newcomers' Well-Being

Job demands and uncertainties increase as early career faculty (i.e., faculty with less than 5 years of experience) navigate their academic career, generating negative consequences for early career faculty’s well-being. Well-being consists of an umbrella of constructs such as job satisfaction (“an overall positive emotional response to a job as a whole;” Thompson & Phua, 2012), vitality (“the subjective experience of energy and liveliness;” Peterson & Seligman, 2004), work-family conflict (“a form of inter-role conflict involving mutually incompatible role pressures from the work and family domains;” Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985), and sense of belonging (“a unique and subjective experience related to the need for connection with others, the need for positive appreciation, and the desire for interpersonal connection;” Marshall & Barnett, 1993) (Sons & Niessen, 2022).

Organizational research has long examined trajectories of newcomers’ well-being from the socialization (e.g., Sons & Niessen, 2022) and affective (e.g., Thompson & Phua, 2012) perspectives. However, existing research fails to systematically investigate the well-being of newcomers in the higher education context, i.e., early career faculty entering a new job in a new university. Our understanding of the well-being and underlying processes hindering or enhancing the well-being of early career faculty, particularly historically underrepresented early career faculty, is limited and fragmented. This is problematic for two reasons. First, understanding when and why well-being suffers for early career faculty is crucial for effective prevention and onboarding programs. Second, meta-analytic studies in the past two decades have documented that impaired well-being leads to greater intention to quit (e.g., Jiang et al., 2012) and higher turnover rate (e.g., Bauer et al., 2007).

Mentorship Research and Practice

Large organizations have invested heavily in developing mentorship programs (e.g., General Electric, John Deere, Procter and Gamble, United Health Care) (Jordan & Sorell, 2019). Mentoring refers to a reciprocal relationship between a more experienced individual (mentor) and a less experienced individual (protégé) intended to enhance mutual growth and learning in the career context (Haggard et al., 2011). Previous research has consistently demonstrated the positive benefits of mentorship relationships for protégés such as higher pay, more promotions, greater job satisfaction and commitment (e.g., Allen et al., 2004) as well as reduced psychological stress and drug use (e.g., Eby et al., 2008). More recently, mentorship has been increasingly adopted in the higher education sector for underrepresented faculty and graduate students (e.g., Shalka, 2017).

Intersectionality Theory

Diversity research is now informed by how intersectionality (i.e., the intertwined and multiplicative effects of multiple social identities; Smith et al., 2019) impacts individuals’ personal lives, employment, and their workplace (Leigh & Desai, 2022). For instance, the workplace experience of a junior, Black, disabled, female faculty member differs vastly from that of a senior, White, non-disabled, male faculty member. The key to understanding intersectional identities is that the effects of intersectional identities cannot be treated as if they are additive. Rather, how individuals experience combinations of social identities and their outcomes relies on the interconnectedness among the multiple identity groups (Rodriguez et al., 2016), and different systems of oppression create compounded effects on different people in distinct ways (Crenshaw, 1989). Although intersectionality research has been slowly emerging, organizational inclusive initiatives (e.g., university mentorship programs) have failed to consider the lived experiences of individuals characterized by the intersection of multiple social identities (Thatcher et al., 2023).

The Early Career Faculty Mentorship Program at Saint Louis University

Drawing upon the insights from the intersectionality and mentorship literatures and aiming to improve the well-being of early career faculty, the Early Career Faculty Mentorship Program was developed by the office of Diversity and Innovative Community Engagement (DICE) at Saint Louis University (SLU) in Fall 2023. Inspired by the Jesuit call to be people for others and to exemplify Cura Personalis (care and concern for the personal development of the whole person), this inaugural program was introduced as a signature initiative of the Belonging Campaign aligned with SLU’s priority of creating a community of well-being and equity.

The development and design for the mentorship program occurred in Spring and Summer 2023. It is designed to support women and other historically underrepresented early career faculty members with less than 5 years of work experience at SLU, both tenure-track and non-tenure track, across the campus. The inaugural, year-long program runs in the 2023-2024 academic year, with monthly events (meetings, seminars, workshops, retreat, social, etc.) starting September 2023 through May 2024.

Our Findings

Our early success with 33 participants who joined the inaugural cohort of the program suggests that mentorship matters! Early career faculty spend much of their first few years at the university navigating the university structure, learning expectations for promotion and tenure, developing a research pipeline, and exploring effective teaching strategies. They are eager for advice and guidance. Our findings with mixed-method analysis confirm previous research that early career faculty participating in the mentorship program exhibit higher well-being (job satisfaction, vitality, sense of belonging), improved trajectory of their academic career, and reduced intention to quit.

Equally important, our findings suggest that mentoring not only develops and retains junior faculty, but empowers and improves the well-being of senior faculty, administrators, organizers, supporters, and friends of the mentorship program because they feel they have helped shape the university culture, taken ownership of their university, and been professionally stimulated and rejuvenated by conversations and interactions with junior faculty. These combined benefits for all involved in the mentorship program will undoubtedly contribute to the long-term survival and success of the institution. These findings illustrate the reciprocal nature of mentorship relationships and align with the limited previous research documenting the positive effects of mentorship relationships on mentors such as increased career success, higher job satisfaction and commitment (e.g., Allen et al., 2006), as well as decreased intentions to quit (e.g., Haggard et al., 2011).

Conclusion

Our experience is that junior faculty desire mentoring connections and senior faculty aspire to mentor, so the one puzzle that would ultimately prompt the creation of mentorship programs relies on the advocacy and sponsor from higher administration as well as visionary leaders. We urgently call on institutions to acknowledge and recognize the unique challenges junior faculty encounter due to their intersectional identities, and to pledge to invest in creating a culture of holistic well-being through university-wide mentorship programs.

References

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