Formal Faculty Mentoring in Higher Education: A Synthesis of Promising Practices 353as to respect the individuality and autonomy of new faculty members who may want to be
nurtured in different ways or who may choose not to be formally mentored at all.
As another cautionary note, it must be underscored that efforts to mentor junior faculty,
where these are haphazard and episodic, can actually do more harm than good. Instead, the
goal should be to create programs that have buy-in from all major constituent groups and that
are intentional and systematic (Johnson & Ridley, 2004; Mullen, 2008). This was the major
lesson learned of a junior faculty task force’s recent investigation, the faculty leader of whom
concluded, “Faculty mentoring is clearly one of the areas that we need to improve if we are to
attract and retain high-quality faculty members as a research doctoral-granting institution”
(personal communications, director of a teaching/learning academy in North Carolina,
October 17, 2007).
Also of concern, the central dynamic of the adult mentoring relationship is its hierarchical
nature (Johnson-Bailey & Cervero, 2002; Hansman, 2003). Faculty mentors with a feminist
orientation deliberately work to change mentoring relationships from that which is
transmissive and traditional to that which is collaborative and power-sharing, and to
deconstruct and transform the received norms and values of organizational relationships.
Mentoring programs that promote the treatment of all new faculty members as equal
colleagues within a mutually supportive community that, in its rich diversity, makes a
workplace thriving and interconnected can make all the difference. To this end, I have
advanced a perspective complete with conceptual orientations and strategies that others can
consider for adaptation to their own unique contexts.
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