Mentoring in Academia 1 Payne, S. C., Thompson, R. J., & Pesonen, A. (2011, April). Mentoring in academia: Who needs it? Paper presented at the 26th annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Chicago, IL. Poster TITLE Mentoring in Academia: Who needs it? ABSTRACT This study identified some personal and situational characteristics of faculty members associated with the perceived need for mentoring and determined that less experienced employees, women and ethnic minorities reported significantly stronger needs for all mentoring functions. Employees who experienced incivility or discrimination reported a significantly higher need for psychosocial mentoring. PRESS PARAGRAPH Extensive research has revealed the value of mentoring to protégés, mentors, and organizations, yet little research has explicitly examined who perceives the strongest need for mentoring. This study identified some personal and situational characteristics of faculty members associated with the perceived need for mentoring and determined that less experienced employees, women, and ethnic minorities reported significantly stronger needs for all mentoring functions. Employees who experienced incivility or discrimination reported a significantly higher need for psychosocial mentoring. Implications for faculty development and university climate are discussed. Mentoring in Academia 2 Mentoring in Academia: Who needs it? The value of mentoring for protégés is well established (Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lentz, & Lima, 2004). Mentoring has been shown to positively relate to numerous individual outcomes including salary, promotions (Scandura, 1992), career satisfaction, commitment, and job involvement (Aryee & Chay, 1994). Mentoring is beneficial for mentors and organizations as well (Russell & Adams, 1997). As a result, many formal mentoring programs have been instituted by organizations (e.g., AT&T, Federal Express). Whereas the benefits of mentoring are clear, who perceives the greatest need for mentoring has not been addressed. The success of any mentoring relationship is likely to depend on the protégés’ recognition of their individual needs for mentoring and willingness to be mentored. Although a significant amount of research has examined protégé and mentor characteristics such as demographics and personality variables (e.g., Fagenson, 1992), minimal research has empirically examined protégé perceived need for mentoring and/or motivation to be mentored (Wanberg, Welsh, & Hezlett, 2003). Correspondingly, we attempt to identify the characteristics of protégés who perceive a greater need for mentoring, specifically characteristics of faculty in academia, a context in which mentoring has been identified as crucial (Johnson, 2007). Mentorship has been defined as “an intense interpersonal exchange between a senior experienced colleague (mentor) and a less experienced junior colleague (protégé) in which the mentor provides support, direction, and feedback regarding career plans and personal development” (Russell & Adams, 1997, p. 2). Mentors provide multiple sources of support (also referred to as mentoring functions) to their protégés including career-related support, psychosocial support, and role modeling (Kram, 1983; Scandura, 1992). Career-related support is intended to aid in career advancement and involves coaching, supplying protection, providing Mentoring in Academia 3 challenging assignments, increasing employee exposure and visibility, and direct forms of sponsorship. Psychosocial support is intended to facilitate feelings of competence and includes serving as friend and counselor by providing positive regard and acceptance (Dreher & Ash, 1990). Finally, mentors can also serve as role models for protégés (Scandura, 1992). In organizational and academic contexts, experience and seniority are often quite salient through job titles and associated responsibilities. As newcomers are socialized into the organization, they learn how to do their job within the organizational context as well as priorities and expectations. Correspondingly, we anticipate that less experienced employees will perceive greater career-related and role modeling mentoring needs. To the extent to which they are new to the geographical location or the industry as a whole, they are also likely to benefit from psychosocial mentoring. Hypothesis 1: Employees with less organizational experience will report a stronger need for (a) career-related, (b) role modeling, and (c) psychosocial mentoring than employees with more organizational experience. Minority Status In their review of the mentoring literature, Wanberg, Welsch, and Hezlett (2003) note that sex and race have received a fair amount of attention. However, these issues have not been substantially explored in certain organizational settings; thus, these issues may be more complex within specific types of jobs. Women and ethnic minorities who seek careers in less diverse environments may find it difficult to both break into and thrive in these work settings. All individuals experience some barriers to career success; however some settings may present additional obstacles for minorities. In academia, women and nonwhite employees are traditionally the minority. Mentoring in Academia 4 Sex Research has demonstrated that women greatly benefit from having a mentor (e.g., Ragins & Cotton, 1999; Ragins & Scandura, 1994). Mentoring relationships are likely necessary, for women in most organizations, as success and advancement often necessitates that women develop a sense of belonging in environments that may value masculine over feminine traits (McKeen & Bujaki, 2007). “Career women” typically feel pressured to emphasize masculine traits such as competence while downplaying feminine traits such as interpersonal warmth; breaking of such gender roles is often received negatively and provokes feelings of threat and resentment (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). Clearly, navigating the confusion that may result from stepping outside of gender norms to build a successful career is a challenge for women, which likely requires the assistance of a mentor to surmount. Additionally, as women tend to be more concerned with balancing work and family than men, women may uniquely benefit from psychosocial support (Bernstein & Russo, 2008). Additionally, mentored women in academia, compared to nonmentored women faculty, had lower rates of turnover, received promotions more frequently, and annually received over $4500 more in grants, suggesting the value of career-related mentoring and role modeling for academic women (Gardiner, Tiggeman, Kearns, & Marshall, 2007). The present study will further examine mentoring for women in academia by determining the extent to which women faculty perceive a greater need for mentoring than men faculty. We propose: Hypothesis 2: Women faculty will report a higher need for (a) career-related mentoring, (b) role modeling, and (c) psychosocial mentoring than men faculty. Women in STEM Mentoring in Academia 5 Much research on mentoring of women has focused on women protégés in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers in which women continue to be greatly underrepresented; among PhDs, there is a greater scarcity of women in STEM careers than any other discipline (Bernstein & Russo, 2008). The underrepresentation of women in these fields creates a concern that the lack of diversity limits innovative ideas that may be put forth by individuals with diverse perspectives (Bernstein & Russo, 2008). Moreover, because STEM fields are associated with prestige and social power, opening these careers to all individuals facilitates a social justice agenda. It has frequently been suggested that mentoring can serve to retain women in STEM fields. Ramaswami, Dreher, Bretz, and Weithoff (2010) found that in male-dominated industries, having a senior male mentor was strongly related to compensation and career progress satisfaction for women protégés. This effect was greater than the effect for women in gender neutral industries and for men in both male-dominated and gender neutral industries. While it seems that men mentors can provide valuable career-related mentoring and role modeling to women in STEM fields, having a woman mentor is especially important for psychosocial mentoring in highly masculine environments. Settles Cortina, Stewart, and Malley, (2007) reported that in natural sciences, mentoring by women - but not men - was related to perceptions of voice for women protégés. Furthermore, Ferriman, Lubinski, and Benbow (2009) found that between the ages of 25 and 35, the priorities of math and science graduate students changed such that women’s desire for flexible work schedules and limited work hours increased, and these issues as well as being free on weekends showed greater discrepancies between men and women. Such changes were most profound for women with children, suggesting a stronger need for psychosocial mentoring which may best be provided by women mentors. Mentoring in Academia 6 Unfortunately, it is widely accepted that there is a lack of available female mentors in STEM fields. Because female mentor-female protégé relationships tend to be most visible in fields where women are underrepresented on the whole, making them more subject to scrutiny and pressure associated with token status (Kanter, 1977), women may be less willing to mentor than men (Ragins & Cotton, 1993). Ragins and Cotton (1993) empirically demonstrated that women perceived greater drawbacks to becoming a mentor than