Stories of a transformative mentorship: graduate student glue

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to narrate authors’ personal and professional experiences as doctoral graduate students, highlighting the personal and academic growth fostered through an organic peer mentorship and advocating that these relationships be cultivated actively by faculty advisors. Design/methodology/approach The concepts of purpose, planning, and positivity are employed to organize the discussion, which is based on relevant literature and the authors’ lived experiences. Findings Like most students who pursue and complete doctoral degrees, the authors experienced transformative learning. The authors acknowledge myriad ways their informal peer mentoring relationship was a critical component of successful degree completion. Originality/value While their relationship remains unique and perhaps inimitable, the authors seek to extrapolate the universal qualities relevant to others seeking a deep and personal support system during their doctoral degree-seeking journey.

Multidisciplinary Peer-Mentoring Groups Supporting Knowledge Sharing in Doctoral Education

“…While mentoring is often organised as one-on-one or a dyad of a senior mentor and a junior mentee, it can also be organised in group constellationsas peer mentoring, group mentoring, or collaborative mentoring (Asgari & Carter, 2016;Kroll, 2016) and may also take place among junior scholars without senior mentors (Gregoric & Wilson, 2012). Mentoring organised in peer groups emphasises professional (Fleming et al, 2015) and emotional (Scott & Miller, 2017) support offered by peers and the benefits of being able to reflect on one's own experiences (Skaniakos & Piirainen, 2019) in a safe and supportive environment (Griffin et al, 2015;Turner et al, 2012). For example, students participating in peer mentoring programmes have been argued to display higher levels of integration into academia (Collings et al, 2014) and perform better in their studies than non-participating students (Leidenfrost et al, 2014).…”

“…One option for additional, informal support on the doctoral path can be offered by peers (Meschitti, 2019;Wegener et al, 2016), and cultivating collegiality is generally considered an important part of doctoral education (Brown, 2019). While not typically part of doctoral curricula (Elliot et al, 2016b;Scott & Miller, 2017), also mentoring may support the wellbeing (for examples, see Lorenzetti et al, 2019) and retention of doctoral researchers (Brill et al, 2014), as well as the establishment of and success on a research career (Curtin et al, 2016). Most mentoring research, however, focuses on discipline or faculty-specific mentoring, and little research exists on multidisciplinary peer-mentoring groups (PMGs) which combine both the peer support and the support offered by experienced scholars (Aarnikoivu et al, 2020).…”

Self-reflective mentoring: perspectives of peer mentors in an education doctoral program

“…Recognizing the benefit of both formal academic advice and peer support, faculty and peer mentors often form a joint support system for students (Santora et al, 2013). Faculty are in the unique position to facilitate and foster peer connections and mentorship, such as by modeling collaboration and creating opportunities for peer mentoring (Scott and Miller, 2017). While the peer mentor interacts with their mentee(s) on a one-on-one basis, the faculty may offer support by organizing the peer mentoring program, overseeing the connection of peer mentors to mentees and offering an open door for the mentor and mentee if they should need it (Budge, 2006;Fleck and Mullins, 2012;Webb et al, 2009).…”

STEM doctoral mentoring: a call for a conscious, culturally responsive journey

“…Thus, intentional efforts, such as training in culturally responsive mentoring, should be forged across the whole department to nurture successful mentoring relationships. This finding adds to the existing body of literature that calls for institutional accountability, commitment and collaboration to provide support and training (Hund et al , 2018; Scott and Miller, 2017), particularly for mentors of URM students (Brown-Nagin, 2016; Gardner, 2010). Institutional accountability can occur by creating conditions wherein faculty trend away from “reproduc[ing] status quo and militat[ing] against social, cultural, and intellectual diversity” (Scott and Miller, 2017, p. 150).…”