The Science of Effective Mentorship in STEMM (2019) / Chapter Skim
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7 Individuals, Relationships, and Institutional Responsibility: How Can Institutional Culture Better Support Mentorship?
7 Individuals, Relationships, and Institutional Responsibility: How Can Institutional Culture Better Support Mentorship?
Pages 151-174
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From page 151... ...
professionals.1 Because diversity in STEMM workforces has a positive effect on the STEMM ecosystem and on innovation, supporting effective mentorship and mitigating negative mentoring experiences will likely result in STEMM workplaces that are more creative, innovative, and responsive to current and emerging problems. However, significant institutional change -- requiring buy-in from institutional leader ship, college deans, department chairs, and individual faculty, as well as new institutional policy -- may be needed to ensure broader access to effective mentorship and support systems (Fleming et al., 2012; Packard, 2016)
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From page 152... ...
In addition, mentorship education can improve mentor competence from the perspective of both the mentor and the mentee. To realize the full potential of mentor ship effectiveness, however, changes are needed at all levels of higher education, as well as in external environments such as professional associations.4 Mentorship, as an evidence-based practice, can be systematically integrated into the work of individuals and organizations focused on preparing diverse under raduate g and graduate students to join and be successful in the STEMM workforce.
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. In short, engaging in organizational change will involve energetic change agents, distributed leadership, adequate support, and commit ment to long-term change that will embed quality mentorship practices in daily work (Spillane et al., 2001)
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. Changing the norms of a department's mentorship practices from "private practice" to mentorship that is open to review and improvement can be difficult in the face of resistance from individual faculty members and department heads, and institutional leaders may not be aware that there is a problem or who, for one reason or another, is not overtly in favor of inclusive or evidence-based practice.6 Mentorship education, which can be useful in these types of situations, is a solution that the com mittee explored further in the "Mentorship Education" section of Chapter 5.
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, thinking of institutions as dynamic learning organizations can help participants foster change using a process that begins with research to assess institutional performance in light of existing practice and results in implementation of evidence-based approaches.9 This process recognizes 8 cological systems theory is discussed further in the "Six Theoretical Models for Mentorship" section E of Chapter 2. 9 e committee employed an organization learning lens as a particular change perspective well suited Th to academic institutions because a learning organization is "an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights" (Garvin, 1993, p.
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From page 156... ...
Specifically, such efforts may include building knowledge among mentors by providing mentorship education, creating buy-in among faculty and staff, and supporting them in implementing effective mentoring practices by making tools such as templates for mentoring compacts and individual development plans and supports such as coaching and feedback available. Efforts to sustain change might include accountability mechanisms that build mentorship evaluation into annual review, tenure, and promotion decisions.
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The remainder of this chapter outlines possible actions and opportunities for five participant groups: uni versity leaders; department chairs; research, training, and graduate program directors; faculty mentors;13 and undergraduate and graduate students. Each participant group is provided with a set of potential actions (see Boxes 7-2, 7-3, 7-4, 7-5, and 7-6)
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From page 158... ...
Organizational Approaches Evidence regarding institutional processes that effectively support mentorship come primarily from the literature on mentorship in business settings. This literature contains extensive research on institutional and administrative factors that increase the likelihood that organizations can implement and sustain effective mentorship programs (Hegstad and Wentling, 2005)
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From page 159... ...
, the University of Georgia Graduate School Out standing Mentoring Award (see http://grad.uga.edu/index.php/current-students/financial-information/ graduate-school-recognition-awards/outstanding-mentoring-award/) , the North Carolina State Univer sity Graduate School's Outstanding Graduate Faculty Mentor Award (see https://grad.ncsu.edu/research/ mentor-award/)
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From page 160... ...
However, as noted in the committee's listening sessions and at the public workshops, many institutions do not stress that effective mentorship for under graduates and graduate students is a high-value priority that aligns with key institutional goals during the onboarding process or during orientation.21 Systematic mentorship education is rarely a component of onboarding processes, despite evidence suggesting that well-trained mentors can affect undergraduates and graduate students' perceptions very positively (Raymond and Kannan, 2014) .22 Additionally, research evidence lends support to the notion that, for mentorship education to be effective, it does not have to be long and time-consuming (Allen et al., 2006)
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This can raise awareness and become a campus inventory of opportunities available to students and mentors. • Engage faculty professional development programs and centers in addressing mentorship as part of undergraduate research, graduate training, faculty learning communities, new faculty orientation, and regular programming.
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Department chairs, whose function at the university is equivalent to first-line super visors in many organizational and business settings, can serve as critical levers in the mentorship process. They can receive information about how mentorship practices can be taught and improved and about the roles they can play in developing their faculty and staff not only as STEMM professionals but also as mentors of the next generation of STEMM professionals.
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.27 Effective error management cultures stand in contrast to systems where mentorship quality, process, and outcomes are assessed, but the resulting data are utilized punitively rather than with the goal of developing better mentors and better mentorship processes and outcomes. Possible actions for department chairs are listed in Box 7-3.
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From page 164... ...
Program directors can also regularly provide midlevel administrators, such as deans and department chairs, with program information, including information about mentoring metrics, to establish the program as vital to training at the institution and an exemplar for mentorship beyond the program. It is essential that departments continuously provide faculty with information on how they can best recruit, mentor, and contribute to the success of diverse undergraduate and graduate students in their respective research groups (Johnson‐Bailey and Cervero,
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From page 165... ...
Program directors can also pay attention to the stages of mentorship and ensure that the evolving needs of undergraduate and graduate students are met as they move toward increasing independence.30 Possible actions for research, training, and graduate program directors are listed in Box 7-4. Faculty Mentors Faculty can have tremendous influence on the culture of mentoring through their own practice -- by what they implement, role model, and value in their research teams and in what they support and promote within their programs and departments.
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• Provide opportunities for mentorship education for both mentors and mentees. have developed successful practices often find these practices begin to be more broadly adopted across peer institutions, as institutions have a tendency to become more alike rather than dissimilar over time (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983)
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. The financial costs of mentoring incurred by UR faculty include devoting extra time beyond the workweek to mentoring and using their own income to help fund undergraduate research.
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Undergraduate and Graduate Students Graduate and undergraduate students can significantly affect the culture of men torship, both in their individual mentoring relationships and in their departments and educational programs (Lunsford and Baker, 2016)
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• Adopt new policies and practices in departments to ensure access to mentorship and ensure the quality of mentorship experiences for both mentors and mentees. • Hold colleagues accountable for adopting effective mentorship practices in reviews for tenure and promotion.
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• Ask for evidence of mentor effectiveness from department chairs, program directors, and other students in the program, and carefully weigh this evidence in choosing mentors. • Ask for opportunities to share honestly and confidentially on mentorship experiences, perhaps through ombudspersons.
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. There are growing examples of empirically guided institutional initiatives to support culturally responsive mentorship, including the National Research Mentoring Network and the Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity programs, both sponsored by the NIH Diversity Program Consortium.
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With exceptions such as NIH T32 pre- and postdoctoral training grants, institutions and principal investigators apply ing for funding are rarely required to include documentation on the diversity of those involved in mentoring relationships or present evidence about the effectiveness of their mentorship activities. More generally, many funding mechanisms do not routinely require applicants or their institutions to describe their mentorship systems, including the systems that incentivize and reward effective mentorship or the processes in place to support and evaluate culturally responsive mentorship.
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From page 173... ...
, access and diversity initiatives (see http://www.aplu.org/projects-and initiatives/access-and-diversity/) , and STEM education initiatives (see http://www.aplu.org/projects-and initiatives/stem-education/)
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