3.3 Mentoring doctoral students: the need for a pedagogy  (Page 3/10)

At the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville, a structured and intensive peer advisor program exists for incoming minority students (Olson, 2006).Throughout the first year, the UVA mentoring program sponsors on-campus activities including meals, weekly study sessions and celebrations of milestones such as completing the first semester. It includes personal touches like birthday cards and handwritten notes of congratulations for good grades. After the first semester, students can choose to be mentored by a faculty member. The University of Virginia acknowledges the role of advisor as important, but also considers the powerful effect of authentic mentoring.

Creighton (2006) posits the following:

A strong recommendation is made for administrators and policy makers at all universities to utilize substantive mentoring processes with students from underrepresented populations at their institutions. Obviously, there may not be enough faculty members to assign as mentors to each and very student, but not to investigate alternative uses of mentors is educationally and ethically irresponsible. (p. 113)

It is especially noteworthy to point out that this UVA mentoring program makes a clear distinction between advising and mentoring. Much of the advising role in the first year is programmatic and can be carried out by non-faculty members (e.g., graduate students or staff members). But the important responsibilities of mentoring students with support in academics and toward research and other professional activities is a faculty member in the student’s discipline.

Advising versus mentoring

A major criticism of previous work in the area of mentoring in higher education has been a lack of clarity as to what is mentoring (Santos&Reigadas, 2005). Consequently, this misunderstanding has likely impeded the development of a theoretical and conceptual base from which to examine university-based doctoral mentoring programs. To successfully develop such a base, we must first distinguish between advising and mentoring.

An advisor is a person (not necessarily a faculty member) who is typically assigned to a department or program to meet with the student, to provide advice on degree plans and what courses to take, and address other academic issues or concerns. A mentor, on the other hand, is a person (a faculty member) who the student seeks to emulate professionally, and a person the student chooses to work with and learn from during the research process (Nettles&Millett, 2006). The mentor provides the student with an environment of reciprocity, where the faculty member benefits professionally as much from the relationship as does the student. The two are involved in reciprocal and simultaneous support, where both benefit and contribute to the process. For example, good mentors share professional conferences and publishing opportunities with their doctoral students. At the most basic level,“a mentor is a faculty person who establishes a working relationship with a student and shepherds her or him through the doctoral process to completion”(Nettles&Millett, 2006, p. 98). At higher levels, good mentoring extends beyond the completion stage, preparing the student to become marketable after graduation. In a real sense, student and mentor become lifelong colleagues.