Finding Empathy as We Guide Doctoral Students and Repair Mentor/Mentee Relationships: Using Rusbult's Model to Explore Our Work

• In Event: The Multifaceted Aspects of Conducting Educational Research: Applicability, Relevance, and Impact

Abstract

We, collectively as four dissertation chairs, use autoethnography to examine our relationships with graduate students by using Rusbult’s (1982) framework of responses to relationship deterioration. We explore how our mentoring can impede or facilitate student success once a mentoring relationship is damaged. Collaboratively, we examine how our different mentoring styles lead to the different outcomes when relationship conflict arises. Given Rusbult’s model of Exit, Voice, Loyalty, Neglect, (EVLN) we reflect upon mentoring examples from our own work that illustrate each of the constructs. Our analysis reveals that varying levels of empathy lead to either constructive approaches to relationship repair or further deterioration. Implications can guide chairs to adopt mentoring techniques that rehabilitate the mentor-mentee relationship resulting in student success.

Authors

• Linnea L. Rademaker, Northcentral University

• Elizabeth Wetzler, Northcentral University

• Leah Wickersham-Fish, Northcentral University

• Jennifer O'Connor Duffy, Northcentral University