Mentoring Across Difference: Can We Do It Within an Organization?

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: From Local to National: Redesigning Professional Mentoring to Promote Equity, Development, and Community (Table 8)

Abstract

Mentoring has long been proposed to help faculty make transitions and advance in their career. We recognize for faculty who come from areas that are under-represented in their profession might find it difficult to identify mentors in their local environment and/or those mentors may be few and thus overwhelmed themselves. Additionally, for professions educators “under-represented” can mean many things. As a faculty member focused on education you may not align with local faculty based not only on race, ethnicity, gender, but also profession. For example, you can be a non-physician focused on education in a department of a medical school. You could be a nurse focused on education in a research-intensive nursing school where the educator feels marginalized. Each of these individuals could benefit from a mentor who understands their experience. However, there may be limited availability. There are many different types of mentoring, including dyadic, group, and peer. Concordant race and ethnic mentoring have positive outcomes for both the mentor and mentee. However, we do not know much about the need for concordance among professions educators. Does a mentor for an educator in engineering have to be from engineering? Concordant matches might be difficult since the number of professions educators is limited let alone educators representing diversity. A body of research demonstrates that non-diverse faculty can successfully mentor and support diverse faculty and students if properly prepared and we suspect that will be true across professions educators.

Critically, mentoring should help support these individuals who might feel isolated and would benefit from a sense of belonging. We will explore the question of how a mentoring program can be designed that addresses the needs of researchers in professions education. That program must identify needs that are pertinent for these faculty members and their circumstances. Then the concept of concordance can be explored and what dimensions are critical in these circumstances.

Author

• Elizabeth Gatewood, University of California - San Francisco
  Presenting Author