When Is a Mentor Like a Monk?

YOU, TOO, CAN TAKE TIPS ON MENTORING FROM THE SUCCESSFUL SOCIALIZATION AND SUCCESSION STRATEGIES OF THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH.

I just finished reading a paper by a student in my graduate seminar on the philosophy of higher education.1 All of his classmates wrote about contemporary issues, but this student, Christopher Flesoras, focused instead on mentoring in the medieval church. He reported that both the eastern and western branches of the church (Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox) saw formal mentoring as an important means to acculturate new members and provide continuity from generation to generation. Protestantism, however, broke from this mentoring model. My student wrote that American universities, many of which were originally Protestant, showed little interest in formal mentoring until recently. Interestingly, he noted that many mentoring programs now under development appear to parallel those seen in the medieval church.

This intriguing observation made me think about why American institutions of higher learning see the need for mentoring programs at this moment. What does the medieval church have in common with contemporary U.S. universities? One thing, it seems, is diversity. The medieval church drew its membership from many different ethnicities and cultures worldwide and thus needed explicit and formal mentoring processes to create a sense of community and to earn out succession planning. Protestant churches, however, have tended to be monocultural and regional, because dissenting members can simply split off and form new denominations. In relatively uniform groups, mentoring seems to take place naturally, with no need either to require it or to name it. In diverse settings, however, informal relationships do not arise as easily, and so we see a trend toward explicit and formal mentoring, conceptualized as a professional obligation. American colleges and universities today seem to he moving from reliance on the implicit, informal guidance common in monocultural groups to the explicit, formal mentoring typical of multicultural ones.

The literature about mentoring in academia reports significant benefits for both mentors and those they mentor.2 Formal mentoring relationships, however, vary more in their helpfulness than do informal ones, which have more consistently positive outcomes.3 Especially when mentoring women and minority faculty members, it is important to remember that the definition of mentor includes the concepts of "sponsor" and "advocate" in addition to guide," "tutor," "coach," and "confidante." Many women and minorities will need mentors who will share power, not just knowledge and wisdom, with them.

Students

Today, students at all levels clamor for mentoring. The presence of more women and minorities in higher education contributes to tlie need for mentors, as do demands on students to evaluate ever more information and new career paths created by the global economy. This increased desire among students for intellectual and professional guidance occurs at a time when expectations for faculty research are rising, teaching loads are shrinking, and student advising is being delegated to staff.

Although this situation would seem to reduce the possibility for mentoring relationships between faculty and students, universities have nonetheless expanded mentoring opportunities for undergraduates by, for example, introducing upper-division research programs and first-year seminars, publicizing best mentoring practices, and giving awards to outstanding mentors.

Faculty members MV increasingly expected to mentor students at all lewis in addition to earning out their regular duties. Untenured faculty members question whether mentoring students counts as teaching and how much is expected. They also wonder about the relative importance of teaching, research, and service and about who will mentor them.

Faculty

Universities are trying to answer this last question by expanding mentoring opportunities for untenured faculty members. Some people, however, object to explicit and formal mentoring programs as artificial. Indeed, when life was simpler, this sort of thing usually happened by itself. Facility members-over-whelmingly male and white-used to meet for lunch at now largely defunct faculty clubs and similar locales. In addition, when most professors had stay-at-home spouses. they saw one another at dinner parties and other social events more often than they do today. New faculty members were assimilated with relative ease, and they, knew what was expected of them. Not so anymore.

My own campus, the University of California, Davis. is among the institutions that have taken steps to strengthen the mentoring of untenured faculty members. In 2004, as chair of the committee appointed to recommend improvements in campus mentoring, I had the opportunity to learn firsthand about the challenges we faced. Although the central administration offered work shops and other informational activities for imk'iuired faculty, the quality of mentoring was uneven at the level of departments, schools, and divisions: some units provided strong support, while others offered only minimal help. The committee soon concluded that it had to ascertain which mentoring activities should be made mandatory and which should he optional, after which it would need to determine where each activity should he located: department; college, school, or division; or central administration.