Best Practices in Academic Mentoring: A Model for Excellence

Abstract

Mentoring is important for the recruitment and retention of qualified nurse faculty, their ongoing career development, and leadership development. However, what are current best practices of mentoring? The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a model for excellence in establishing a formal mentoring program for academic nurse educators. Six themes for establishing a formal mentoring program are presented, highlighting best practices in mentoring as culled from experience and the literature. Themes reflect aims to achieve appropriately matched dyads, establish clear mentorship purpose and goals, solidify the dyad relationship, advocate for and guide the protégé, integrate the protégé into the academic culture, and mobilize institutional resources for mentoring support. Attending to the six themes will help mentors achieve important protégé outcomes, such as orientation to the educator role, integration into the academic community, development of teaching, scholarship, and service skills, as well as leadership development. The model is intended to be generalizable for faculty teaching in a variety of academic nursing institution types and sizes. Mentoring that integrates the six themes assists faculty members to better navigate the academic environment and more easily transition to new roles and responsibilities.

Temporary contracts: effect on job satisfaction and personal lives of recent PhD graduates

“…Job satisfaction among (recent) PhD graduates has been assessed for several countries and regions and is generally quite high (e.g., Bender and Heywood (2006), and Moguérou (2002) for the U.S., Di Paolo (2012) for Catalonia; Kifle and Desta (2012) for Australia). Many of these studies (e.g., Bender and Heywood 2006;Di Paolo 2012;Moguérou 2002) found that PhDs working outside of academia are overall less satisfied with their job than those working in academia, although Di Paolo (2012) found that PhDs in non-academic jobs are more satisfied with pecuniary rewards.…”

“…Many of these studies (e.g., Bender and Heywood 2006;Di Paolo 2012;Moguérou 2002) found that PhDs working outside of academia are overall less satisfied with their job than those working in academia, although Di Paolo (2012) found that PhDs in non-academic jobs are more satisfied with pecuniary rewards. Skill matches play a large role among PhDs: a skill mismatch is associated with lower job satisfaction (Bender and Heywood 2009).…”

“…Time in job also affects job satisfaction: directly after finding a new job people are more satisfied with their job (the ''honeymoon effect''), but later they are less satisfied (the ''hangover effect'', e.g., Vroom and Deci 1971;Lawler et al 1975;Boswell et al 2009). Furthermore, having a mentor has been shown to contribute to job satisfaction, through an increase in self-confidence (e.g., Nick et al 2012).…”

“…For example, satisfaction varies by field of PhD (e.g., Moguérou 2002;Sabharwal and Corley 2009). Females tend to be more satisfied with their job than males, not because their jobs are better, but because the expectations they have of their jobs are lower (Clark 1997).…”

“…However, the same paper finds that this gender difference, with women being more satisfied, disappears for the highly educated, and for persons in professional and managerial positions. Indeed, studies on the job satisfaction of PhD graduates have found female PhDs to actually be less satisfied (Bender and Heywood 2006;Moguérou 2002). Nationality also matters: US-born science and engineering faculty were found to be more satisfied with their job than foreign-born faculty (Sabharwal 2011).…”