This
blog entry was originally posted on the ‘Impact Blog’ of the Centre for
Professional, Academic and Organisational Development (CAPOD) at the University
of St Andrews.
Centrally
coordinated and supported mentoring schemes are a relatively new addition to
the professional and career development opportunities offered within Higher
Education. The University of St Andrews has been one of the early adopters to
such schemes, with the Early Career Academics’ Mentoring scheme first trialed
in 2005 and still running (this is a cross-institutional collaboration with the
University of Dundee) and a separate support staff scheme running for the last
three years.
The
potential for mentoring to provide valuable professional and career development
support is generally accepted, but because mentoring programmes in higher
education have only fairly recently taken hold there has been little discussion,
or analysis, of the long term benefits of such schemes.
This
provided us with an exciting opportunity to launch an early study into the long
term results of mentoring schemes, which may perhaps lead to further research,
expanding on our general conclusions.
Over
the summer Daniel O’Hara, an Undergraduate in the School of Mathematics and
Statistics, has been working at CAPOD as an intern. His project has been to
carry out this study and through a combination of interviews and questionnaires
Daniel was able to draw some general conclusions about the perceived value of
mentoring, as well as identify some concrete outcomes cited by participants on
our schemes gong back as far as the original pilot in 2005.
Based
on the responses of participants in the study Daniel produced this revealing
word cloud to reflect the strength of common themes:
During
his study Daniel specifically asked participants about the quality of the match
between themselves and their mentoring partners. 86% of respondents stated that
the match was ‘Good’, ‘Very Good’ or ‘Excellent’. This indicates that the
process that has been adopted has been highly effective in creating
partnerships which have been productive and effective in achieving the aims of
the scheme members.
When
asked if they would recommend the scheme to a colleague the vast majority (85%)
said that they would. This again is a strong indication that participants in
mentoring schemes believe that that the process is worthwhile and beneficial,
and that this belief persists long after the conclusion of the mentoring
partnership.
When
mentees were asked if they would consider mentoring in the future, again a
significant amount indicated they would do so, which also supports the view
that the perceived benefits of mentoring exist well beyond the period of active
participation in mentoring.
The
original pilot scheme in 2005 was based on female-female matching, and in the
current schemes gender is one of the matching preferences which applicants are
asked to state. It therefore seemed worth asking if gender-based matching works
better. By analysing the results of the study by gender matches in partnerships
we were able to conclude that same-gender matches are no more or less effective
than mixed-gender matches. However, since matches are made with gender
preferences being given the highest priority, it is probably more accurate to
say that respecting participants’ stated preference for the gender of their
mentoring partner results in a high level of satisfaction with the partnership.
Further study and comparison with schemes where participants are unable to
state a gender preference may be more revealing on this issue.
Overall,
the results of the study showed that participation in a mentoring scheme has
definitely had positive effects on:
·
Career
Development
·
Professional
Development
·
Adjusting
to University Life
·
Setting
and Achieving SMART Goals
Some
participants were also able to say that their relationships had provided concrete
outcomes that contributed to their career, including:
·
Joint
research projects
·
New
positions
·
Joint
PhD supervision
·
Interdepartmental
research collaboration
·
Cross
institutional research collaboration
·
Changed
career or research focus.
Qualitative
statements about the short term benefits of mentoring are plentiful and are
captured on a regular basis through informal monitoring and formal evaluations
of annual cycles of mentoring schemes. This study has shown that very similar
qualitative statements about the perceived value of mentoring are made by
participants even years after their mentoring partnership has concluded.
Establishing
clear quantitative evidence of the long term benefits of mentoring, in terms of
measurable outcomes such as career progression, publication, funding,
collaborations and so on, has been difficult to assess within the scope and
scale of this study. Further data collection through follow-up studies of
current and future membership will be required to build up a sufficiently large
and reliable data set.
However,
what we do have is anecdotal evidence strongly in favour of the benefits of the
scheme lasting in the long term, particularly where participants feel that
participation contributed to gaining a new post. In some cases however
respondents from earlier cycles of schemes have said that they struggle to
remember if identifiable aspects of career and professional development were as
a result of their involvement of the scheme. This problem of attribution will
always exist, where so many other factors play a part and this naturally
increases as the time elapsed from participation increases.
However,
in future, by more regular contact and monitoring of career and professional
development of participants, it may be possible to make a clearer attribution
and to ensure that participants themselves have a clearer sense of the
contribution the mentoring experience has made.
